Santoryu Kenshi
by LZW
Summary: Zoro ends up in the SAO world and is sent to try and beat the dungeon under Aincrad by Kayaba. He is given a chance to help the other players to escape SAO, will he help them? Or will he go back to his captain ignoring the pleas of the people still trapped? Follow his adventure in this new world where he meets the Black Swordsman. OP Zoro. Completed. Cover Art By YellowStones
1. Chapter 1: Hidden Dungeon

A/N : This will be a one shot to test the waters, if it does well I will continue it. Takes place after what I think would happen if Zoro lost to Kuma to let everyone escape again after he gets powered up after timeskip . Humor me on how Zoro went into the SAO world, it was either this or he gets a mysterious letter / Mihawk sends him there to train more or he just poofs there. Warning : Super OP Zoro.

'Thought'

"Speech"

**Sword Technique/Special Item/Stats**

* * *

As Zoro flew threw the air, a strange ripple in the space time continuum opened up and Zoro flew into the world of SAO just as the Beta Test was about to end.

"Hmm, somehow a 1001th player has entered the Beta Test just before it ended and I can't remove him or shutdown the server. Very well, I shall let you continue to play my game, Roronoa Zoro."

'I might as well meet him and give him the proper introduction.'

"Link Start! System Login ID : GameMaster ."

"Let's see now, System Command : Teleport Player Here : Roronoa Zoro . "

In a flash of blue light, Zoro appeared in front of Kayaba, with his health bar in the low red.

"Wow he's barely hanging on here, won't be good to let him die now, the safety has been disabled. System Command : Heal Player : Roronoa Zoro ."

His facial features relaxed as he was brought back to max health.

"Lets see his stats… What!"

* * *

**Level : 500 (Shown : 35)**

**Stats :**

**Strength : 1,000 (Shown : 100)**

**Agility : 1,000 (Shown : 100)**

**Dexterity : 1,000 (Shown : 100)**

**Health : 50,000 (Shown : 1000)**

**Stamina : 10,000 (Shown : 500)**

**Skills : **

**Sprint : Completed**

**Searching : Completed**

**-Night Vision : Completed**

**-Tracking : Completed**

**Acrobatics : Completed**

**Extended Weight Limit : Completed**

**Extended Weight Limit 2 : Completed ( Unique Skill )**

**Equipment Appraisal : Completed**

**Emergency Recovery : Completed**

**Battle Healing : Completed**

**Cooking : Completed**

**Meditation : Completed**

**Parry : Completed**

**Tough Skin : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**Mutoryu : Completed (Martial Arts)**

**Ittoryu : Completed (Katana)**

**Nitoryu : Completed (Dual Blades)**

**Santoryu : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**Kyutoryu : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**Kitsunebi-ryu : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**Haki : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**-Kenbunshoku Haki : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**-Busoshoku Haki : Completed (Unique Skill)**

**Penalties :**

**Big Eater**

**-Must eat and drink in large quantities.**

**Armorless**

**-Player cannot wear armor.**

**Orientation failure**

**-Player cannot use map.**

**Hidden Strength**

**-Player's true strength is not publicly shown.**

**Cursed Blade**

**-Player will suffer a horrible death.**

**Inventory :**

**Meito Wado Ichimonji ( Undroppable )**

**Sandai Kitetsu ( Undroppable )**

**Meito Shusui ( Undroppable )**

* * *

'Well there hasn't been a security breach but this is not supposed to happen. I'll let it slide, it'll make it more fun to watch, if he starts to clear bosses too early I can just imprison him or something. Perhaps I should speak with him first.'

As if on queue, Zoro awoke.

"What happened? Where am I? Who are you?"

"My name is Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of this game."

"Game? What game? Nevermind, I need to go back and meet up with Luffy!"

"Luffy? You don't mean Monkey D. Luffy do you?"

"Yea, you know him?"

'It would appear that Roronoa Zoro has somehow crossed from the world of the popular anime One Piece into the world of the game Sword Art Online here, most interesting.'

"You have been sent into another world, Zoro, one much more different than the one you know. Only I can let you out but only if you complete all a series of trials. The first trial will be to defeat all a boss below this steel castle, when that is achieved, I will come to you to inform you of your next trial. You should receive something to help you understand this new world in a moment. Another 10,000 people will be joining you soon."

With that, Kayaba logged out in a flash of blue light.

"Wait a minute explain yourself!"

**Item Added : Guide To New World For Roronoa Zoro**

A book then suddenly materializes in a flash of blue light in Zoro's hand.

"Huh? What's this?"

'Raise your right hand then pretend to pull a switch downward.'

Zoro did as it said and the interface opened up.

"What the heck?"

'Look around the interface and for anything else consult the the Help button.'

'Guess there's nothing else to do now but try to familiarize myself with this place.'

* * *

One week later.

"Yosh! It's time to go into this dungeon thing."

"Wow there sure is a huge difference between up there and down here, it's all black and dull."

'Better get started!'

And so Zoro started walking. Soon the sounds of a frog army could be heard reverberating through the dungeon passageways.

"Huh?"

Behind him Zoro saw an army of over 200 Scavenger Toads hopping towards him.

"What's with all these frogs?!"

Zoro drew Shusui and got ready to fight off the frogs.

"**Ittoryu : Sanjuroku Pound Ho!"**

And sound of frogs being killed and pixelated follow after the wave of compressed air cut through the hallway.

"Tch, these things are weak."

Zoro collected the drops and head on his way, only to find even more Scavenger Toads around every corner.

'These things are everywhere, it's gonna take a while to find the boss room.'

* * *

On the day of game release, Zoro found himself in a hallway with a small room containing what looked like a rock. The walls suddenly change and the area changes to a violet blue colour.

"Whats happening?"

And with a clash of steel, Zoro's three swords are quickly drawn to block the giant scythe of a gigantic reaper like monster. Zoro repelled the beast with his swords and jumped back a few feet to get a good look at what he was fighting. The monster's name hovered above it head: '**The Fatal Scythe'**

"Looks like the reaper himself has come to get me, well bring it on!"

Zoro readied his stance and prepares to fight it, the boss immediately attacks Zoro with a sidewards slash but Zoro jumps onto the scythe mid slash and jumps off it towards the boss' head.

"**Oni Giri!"**

The fatal scythe roars out in pain as its health bar immediately goes down to the red zone from Zoro's incredible attack and it switches attack patterns. It raises its arms to its sides and hundreds of miniature scythes spawn behind it and are hurled towards Zoro who retreated back to his original position. Zoro uses his three swords to block the scythes but he doesn't get them all and one manages to injure his left shin.

"Dammit, I need to take him down quick, that one scythe took off 1000hp. This thing ain't joking around. Those frogs were nothing compared to this thing."

Zoro kept his other two swords and decided to take the boss head on with Shusui, with a running start Zoro runs towards the boss then he leaps, targeting his torso area, barely dodging the main scythe as it slashes just where he had been a few seconds ago.

"**Ittoryu : Hiryu-Kaen!'**

The strike cuts cleanly through the fatal scythe and it is engulfed in azure flames, its health bar dwindles down to and it pixelates, the room returning to the way it was and its drops given to Zoro. Zoro headed towards the room he saw earlier while examining his reward and found that he had dropped something called a **Bypass Point **and a Trophy : **The Fatal Scythe's Scythe**. As Zoro enters the room, a blue light starts to emanate from the rock and a virtual button appears. Zoro pushes the button and in a flash of blue light, Kayaba appears in front of him.

"Ah, you finally completed the first floor, funny I expected you to finish it much faster than this. Give me a moment here while I check what took you so long."

Kayaba opened the map of recording Zoro's progress of this floor and smirked when he realized what took Zoro so long.

"**Orientation Failure** wasn't just for show, the boss room was literally the last part of the floor you reached and you somehow went back to the start after reaching so far into the dungeon. No matter, what matters is that you are here now, if I am correct you would have received a **Bypass Point **from the boss right?"

"You mean this thing?"

An aqua coloured orb materialized in Zoro's palm.

"Yes that, now each boss drops one and as you get more of these, you unlock more abilities and boosts. You can select which you want to have activated at these terminals here, at the end when you get the last **Bypass Point**, you will have a choice to either help free whatever remains of the other 10,000 people who are trapped in this world or be free yourself. You have another 99 floors to think about it."

Kayaba faced the terminal and opened up an interface and drags it for Zoro to see.

"Now you have a choice, with one **Bypass Point** you have unlocked your first system bypass. For now you have the choice between **5% More Dmg Dealt **and **5% Less Dmg Received**."

"I'll take the more damage dealt then."

"Right, now, there are 9 more system bypasses you can get. There are at 5, 15, 25, 35, 50, 65, 80, 99 and 100 **Bypass Points**. There is a terminal identical to this on every floor but I will appear on the floors with system bypasses to tell you about them. You can get to the next floor by standing on the terminal. O and here, catch!"

Kayaba throws a jug towards Zoro, he catches and examines it.

'**Endless Sake Bottle'**

Zoro took a swig of it and jumped onto the terminal.

"Ah that's some quality sake. Right, see you on floor 5 then I suppose."

With that, Zoro teleported off to the next floor.


	2. Chapter 2: Asura

A/N: Some of the technique translations may not be accurate as I just used google translate so please bare with it. It will be a fight intensive chapter this time. Sorry about the timeskip.

* * *

Time passed quickly as Zoro and the clearing group advanced on their floors. The clearing group had just entered the 74th floor, ready to find the boss room with Asuna, Kirito ventured forth. Zoro had just finished the 99th floor and was choosing his **System** **Bypass**.

"Well Zoro it's been about two years since you've been here. I think you're ready for this, with all your new techniques and **Bypasses** you should be alright with this final boss. As usual you want the take less damage **Bypass** I assume?"

"Yeah, it's been a fun two years, I have become stronger, but not strong enough."

"I should give you a heads up, the final boss should be well known to you, it's **Asura**. I changed it specifically for you so there will be no maze. It will be the ultimate test for you Zoro. Now go and make me proud, finish the game."

Zoro jumped up onto the pedestal and took a swig of his **Endless Sake Bottle**.

"It's gonna be a fun fight then. I've decided," He had a distant look in his eyes with a smirk on his face as he said it "I'm gonna help the other guys get out, my captain would've done the same anyway..."

Deep in thought, Zoro teleported off to the next floor.

'Luffy, how are you holding out? You can't go off and be the pirate king without me seeing it you reckless idiot.'

* * *

Zoro found himself in a huge coliseum the size of a city, and in front of him stood **Asura**. It was bigger than the size of Oars back on Thriller Bark, greatly resembling a great Daibutsu with three heads and six arms. It was hovering above the ground with its legs folded and its eyes closed.. In each of its six arms, it held a massive sword. Above it, its name was shown with ten health bars. The swords swords were similar to a Scimitar, only they were much longer and more curved.

Zoro drew his three katanas and activated his version of Asura.

"**Kiki Kyutoryu: Asura"**

Zoro's four new arms and two new heads held copies of his swords. Asura rushed forward with its six swords for an opening attack, Zoro used all his nine katanas to block the blow. The swords clashed and a shock wave was created, causing a small crater in the ground. Zoro was being slowly pushed back as Asura pressed forward its six swords. Zoro could only watch as he was slowly overwhelmed by the strength Asura possessed.

He jumped back to try and catch his breath, Asura decided to then change tactics, it pulled its swords back and used two of them to pincer zoro's sides. A third was sent for the top of Zoro. Zoro used three of his swords to block all the attacks. Asura then used two more of his arms to attack Zoro diagonally in between the swords at the sides and the top. Seeing it coming Zoro had no other choice but to move one sword from each side to defend the blow.

Zoro was slowly being squashed as the five swords continued to push against his. Unfortunately for Zoro, Asura still had one more sword free. Asura used the sixth sword to horizontally press on the sword directly on top of Zoro. Zoro groaned as the force his head had to take was multiplied. With no other option left, Zoro was forced to use a technique that drained him of his stamina greatly just to survive.

"**Kyutoryu: Nisensanbyakuyonju Pound Ho!" **(2340 Pound Cannon!)

Each of Zoro's nine blades released a blast of force at the swords of Asura. Using the time that the swords were repelled, Zoro jumped back panting. One of the blasts strayed and hit Asura's face, Asura's first health bar went down by about 1% .The technique had used up 35% of his stamina. He had barely survived Asura's second attack at a high cost. The difficulty of this level was much harder than the previous boss, "**The Fan Blader"**. It was a massive propellor that could shoot out its blades that had a homing effect. It had taken Zoro just some effort to defeat, but Asura had as easy. Even one of his most powerful techniques had only barely repelled Asura's blades.

He was backed up into a corner, he took a swig of his **Endless Sake Bottle** to replenish his stamina to the maximum and ran trying to think of a way to get through Asura's defense. As he ran, he was constantly seen by either one of Asura's three heads. He had to somehow get behind Asura to deal any kind of damage without having to go through the massive swords.

He barely had time to finish his train of thought before Asura started fanning out its swords horizontally to cut at Zoro's feet, forcing him to jump to avoid the slashes while running. Having enough of this, Zoro landed on one of the swords and ran up it while hastily launching '360 Pound Cannons' at Asura. Asura simply tilted the sword 90 degrees and Zoro was forced to jump off before he slipped off the blade, only to be cut by one of Asura's other blades. He took a look at Asura's life bar and saw that he only managed to reduce it to about 97%.

"What is with this thing, the amount of health it has is insane, all those '360 Pound Cannons' wore me out but it barely scratched Asura. Guess there's only one way to deal with this thing."

Zoro took another swig of sake as he checked his health, it was at about 90%. Zoro decided to change tactics as Asura went for another pincer attack on Zoro. This time, instead of blocking the blades, Zoro decided to use all his swords to focus on attacking one of the swords until it broke. He jumped out of the way and quickly continued to attack at the weak spots of Asura's first blade. He had no idea how long it would take for one of the boss' swords to break but it was the only choice he had left as his attacks did minimal damage to Asura, whereas Asura's did a lot to him.

Asura soon changed his tactics and went back to cutting at Zoro's feet. Zoro now jumped up above the blades and then used his katanas to cut at the blade as it passed below him, damaging it slightly. After about ten minutes of alternating attack patterns, Zoro finally landed the final hit on Asura's first sword. It was split into two and Zoro, panting heavily from the onslaught of attacks he had to dish out to break the blade, ran to the end of the coliseum to catch his breath and snack on some 'Roasted Demonic Chicken Meat'.

Asura let out a terrifying roar as it discarded the broken sword and reached up and grabbed it tenth health bar. The health bar transformed into a more terrifying version of the sword that Zoro had destroyed. It was now blood red and its handle was on fire.

'So it loses a health bar for each sword I break, I guess that's its weakness.'

Now that it was down a healthbar, Asura changed tactics.

With its six swords, it now uses them to aim at Zoro directly, going straight for him in order. Zoro dodged the first blade and started running, only to have the other five land just right behind him one by one. Even stopping for a moment would prove to be fatal. He had to find a way to damage one of the remaining five blades without getting cut.

Zoro continued to run around Asura and started to hurl '360 Pound Cannons' at the blades behind him. They slowly took damage until Asura changed attacks. Now all six blades, three at each side pincered Zoro and forced him to a halt. Overwhelmed by the force of the six blades, Zoro once again had to use another exhausting technique.

"**Kyutoryu: San Gorilla, Roku Gorilla!" **(Three Gorilla, Six Gorilla!)

With his strengthened arms, Zoro managed to push back the blades but the technique drained his stamina by 1% every 5 seconds. Asura changed back to its earlier tactic and again started to use its blade to attack Zoro. After running for a little while, Zoro thought of an idea. He stood in stance and waited for one of the blades to come for him. He used three swords at the top to block the strike and his six swords at the side to barrage the sword with attacks whittling down its durability with his strengthen strikes. As the second blade began to come down on the first, Zoro used the six swords to help the first three to push off the blade.

After dodging the second blade, Zoro resumed running and launching '360 Pound Cannons' at the blades behind him. When Asura's swords finally rotated back to the one that Zoro had damaged greatly, Zoro used one of his newer techniques in an attempt to destroy the blade.

"**Ittoryu: Sansenrokbyaku Pound Ho!" **(3600 Pound Cannon)

With this final attack, the blade could withstand no more as too, broke. Asura again reached up and pulled its ninth health bar this time. This time the blade was different from the first, it was cold blue instead of red and the handle was ablaze with an azure flame. Zoro took this time to disengage his 'Six Gorilla' and replenish his stamina with some herbs he had found throughout the dungeon as they worked quicker than the sake. He took a look at Asura's first health bar and saw that his attacks had brought it down to about 94% since he was not really aiming for Asura but rather its swords.

With another sword came another attack pattern from the boss. Now with its two newer swords, Asura once more changed its attack pattern and this time crossed the flaming blade and a purple fire engulfed both the blades. Asura aimed the blades up and multiple purple balls of fire shot up into the sky. Zoro dodged the fireballs skillfully but what surprised him was that at where the fireballs landed, little imp like creatures were created, all surrounded by blueviolet flames wielding two distorted looking daggers. The name above them,'**Hell-Spawn Imp'** seemed to suit them nicely.

With the creatures spawned, Zoro now had to deal with the Imps and Asura's blades at the same time. In order to rid himself of any distractions, Zoro decided to focus on the Imps first, he was quickly overwhelmed by the Imps and had to strain himself to keep up with blocking their barrage of attacks. They agilely leapt and spun with their daggers in attempts to strike Zoro. While distracted by the vast numbers of Imps, Zoro had neglected Asura and was struck cleanly on the shoulder by one of Asura's four remaining original swords and had to use all his strength to remove it from his shoulder before retreating to a safer area to heal up.

The attack had heavily damaged Zoro and was left with 60% of his health, he had to use up some of the health potions that some of the dungeon monsters had dropped to heal himself and replenish his heavily expended stamina. Staying in his Asura state was heavily taxing on his stamina and had to continuously replenish it to continue staying in his Asura form. The Imps had largely covered the entire coliseum and Zoro had resigned himself that he had to focus on Asura as there seemed to be countless of them.

Zoro ran back into the fight and slashed away any Imps in his way as he made his way to focus on Asura's swords again. When he was within range of Asura's blades, he shot out three '1080 Pound Cannons' at the middle left blade, two connected but the third strayed and collided with a group of unfortunate Imps. Asura, used the flat of its blades to launch several Imps at Zoro. With this many Imps surrounding him, the heat from their flames making him sweat profusely, Zoro had little choice but to get rid of them. Zoro used the technique he had used to clear large swarms of enemies to rid himself of the crowd of Imps. He jumped into the air and spread out his katanas.

"**Kyutoryu: Sanmanroksen Pound Miraboru Ho!" **(Nine Sword Style: 36000 Pound Disco Ball Cannon)

Zoro fired out wave after wave of '36 Pound Cannons' off in every direction, sometimes hitting Asura but mainly clearing out most of the 'Hell-Spawn Imps'. After the barrage of '36 Pound Cannons' Zoro landed unsteadily as it had completely exhausted him to the point where he could barely keep up **Asura**. He went into a clearing from his barrage and hid behind a rock, he was close to completely out of stamina and was forced to consume one of his rarer herbs. It was a hard and barely plant like herb which was chocolate brown in colour and only found in specific places of certain floors. Zoro ate it and instantly felt energised.

He glanced over to see that his barrage had reduced Asura's health by only another 1% as they were significantly weaker than his '360 Pound Cannons'. As he tried to think of a way to attack Asura without getting overwhelmed by the Imps. He saw many pillars supporting the coliseum and had an idea. He slashed at the top and bottom of one of the pillars, dislodging it and used a '1080 Pound Cannon' to launch it towards Asura. Prioritising avoiding a direct hit, Asura used a blade to block the attack and the blade had happened to be the one that Zoro had attacked earlier. As the massive pillar collided with the blade, it snapped and the upper end of the blade flew with the remaining parts of the pillar and struck Asura square in the chest, taking a noticeable amount of its health off.

Asura was now at 90% health as it reached up to grab its third health bar sword. The sword began to materialize but was now of a different design, the curve of the sword now had spikes jutting out. It was aflame by a cadmium-lemon flame. As Asura let out another roar, the next phase had begun. Zoro tried to conserve his herbs and drank some more of his Sake.

Now that it's swords had changed again, Zoro was concerned if he could still manage to keep up the fight. Asura put the yellow and blue flamed swords together, the fires merged to form a cinnabar green flame. As flames flew out of the centre of the crossed blades to cover the entire coliseum, Zoro used his arms to block the flames but was surprised to find that the flames did not burn, but felt rather cool. He then noticed that the Imps had been calmed by the flames, all the Imps then pixelated and the pixels gathered below Asura. A new monster had been formed, 'Devil-Spawn Troll' it read, it was as a quarter as big as Asura, rivaling the size of giants.

The Troll wielded an axe engulfed by a pale green flame and was sprinting towards Zoro. It jumped up into the air and dived with its axe out front in an attempt to surprise Zoro with an aerial attack. Zoro anticipated the attack and used his katanas to block the axe before it could connect. The strength of the creature had caught Zoro off guard, it continued to push its axe down onto Zoro's blades, the strength had overwhelmed Zoro and had to jump back. The axe strike continued to the ground where Zoro had been before and a huge cloud of dust was thrown up. When the dust had cleared, the crater the axe had created was revealed. Zoro doubted that he would be able to compete with this level of strength easily and activated his 'Six Gorilla' again. The Troll jumped out of the crater and stood in front of Zoro, now seeing it up close, Zoro saw how tall it really was. Zoro readied his stance and used another upgraded version of his older techniques. He paired two Shusuis, two Kitetsus and one Shusui and one Kitetsu together, forming three double blades.

"**Kyutoryu: Sai to Ushi Bari Danmaku!" **(Rhino and Bull's Horns Barrage)

He charged the Troll while using his three Wado Ichimonjis to block the axe as it came down above him. His hits all sliced the massive Troll as it his six swords barraged the Troll with cuts. As the troll fell over and pixelated, Zoro used what little remained of his energy to hide behind some fallen pillars before Asura started its next attack. The two techniques combined had completely run him dry of stamina and he had to disable his Asura mode to restore stamina. Now with only three swords left, he drank some Sake and used up the last of his stamina herbs. While waiting for them to take effect, he looked over the fallen pillar and saw Asura now crossing the yellow and red blades, creating a bright orange flame. The flame spread to cover Asura's entire body and Zoro saw its health bar rise slowly.

About to go out and face Asura, Zoro gripped his katanas and reactivated **Asura**. But what happened next had confused him greatly, Asura had grabbed three of its life bars and turned them into blades. Asura had crossed all six of them and two more health bars had flown on their own transforming into blades and formed a fourth cross. Asura's second last health bar had done the most surprising thing, it had melted together the four crosses to form a single huge sword. The sword was massive in size, it was three quarters as tall as Asura, as broad as Laboon had been and was as thick as a pirate ship.

(I pictured the sword as the upper part of the 'Double Bladed Staff' in Risen)

It became apparent that Asura's ten health bars had merely been for intimidation as nine had been used up in the end to power itself up, but its defense was so great that the single health bar was more than a challenge.

Asura's legs had uncrossed and it was now standing, appearing taller than it ever was before and now it's six eyes had opened. Now Asura and all of its swords were engulfed by a black flame. Standing tall, the great Daibutsu used its six strong arms to wield the great blade. As it moved, its steps shook the ground. The blade came down onto Zoro as he hurriedly used 'Six Gorilla' and blocked the strike, the shock wave created spewed dust out of the coliseum as a crater as big as a small town was created. Even with his heightened strength that could take all six of Asura's original swords at once, it proved useless against the new blade as Zoro felt himself being crushed under the new blade's immense force.

He knew he was fighting a losing battle, the impact itself had shown the strength of the new blade. Immobilized and unable to hold it back any longer, Zoro's stamina continued to dwindle as he pushed himself to hold back the attack. Asura brought the blade up, exhausted, Zoro fell to the ground as his **Asura **was deactivated. Laying flat in the crater, barely hanging on to his three swords, Zoro closed his eyes as Asura brought the sword down once more…

'I guess this is the end, and here I thought I could beat this thing. It ain't named Asura for nothing after all. It's been a fun two years, but I guess I wasn't strong enough.'

A familiar voice ringed in Zoro's ears as he had given up.

'Now now Zoro, where was all that confidence you had before, what about all the people you were going to save? What about going back to Luffy and the rest of the crew? What about being the best swordsman in the world? If you fail here, all these goals will be left unfinished.'

Realization dawned on Zoro as Kayaba spoke those words. He had promises to keep, people to save. He couldn't die here!

Regaining his will to fight, Zoro quickly did a spin and used the momentum to jump out of the way of the sword. As the sword hit earth, a mushroom cloud of dust was thrown into the air. Now determined to win, Zoro consumed every stamina item he had even the ones that gave barely any. He used them all at once and managed to refill his stamina to about 85%. Zoro puts all his confidence into a final attempt at defeating Asura, a combo of attacks that he had never attempted before.

"**Kyutoryu: Asura: Ugui!" **(Nine Sword Style: Asura: Piercing Drill)

Zoro launches himself upward towards Asura which had lifted its blade up to block Zoro. Zoro's technique continued to drill away at Asura's great sword until he lost his momentum and slow down. Using the remaining momentum, Zoro released a '2340 Pound Cannon' at the blade. It managed to blast the blade upwards slightly. Using the opportunity, Zoro fired off '36 Pound Cannons' behind him and used the recoil to fly directly in front of Asura's face but behind the sword. He readied his attack,

"**Kyutoryu Ogi: Roku Gorilla Daibutsu Yaki Giri!" **(Nine Sword Style Secret Technique: Six Gorilla Great Buddha Burning Slash)

As Zoro initiated his attacks, his swords were set alight and slashed at Asura. His six swords at the side slashed at Asura diagonally, the middle three slashed vertically. Finishing his slash, Asura's great form was consequently cut into multiple pieces.

As Zoro landed, he sheathed his swords and Asura was engulfed in flames. The final bits of its health bar dwindled away and it crumbled to the ground, pixelating away, leaving behind its great sword as the trophy. Strangely, even though he was completely exhausted just a few moments ago, Zoro felt himself still full of strength. He glanced to the corner and saw that he had been fully healed, behind him, he heard a familiar sound. He looked over to where Asura had once been to see Kayaba standing there with a smile on his face.

"Well done Zoro, you have completed the game, now I shall add in your **System Bypass** and all you have to do is head back out of the dungeon to get to the other players. When you see them, remember not to mention me, after all, I trapped them here."

"Yea yea, I got it you crazy old man now just how exactly do I help them."

"You simply have to defeat me on the 100th floor on the top. Also as another reward for finishing this dungeon, I shall give you a title."

Kayaba opened up the interface and keyed in a few commands, now beside Zoro's name, a title appeared.

'**Santoryu Kenshi, Sword Art Online's Greatest Sword Master: Roronoa Zoro'**

"It's a bit long don't you think? Well whatever, I guess it's fitting. Greatest Sword Master huh? I've come a long way since being a bounty hunter back in that Marine Base in East Blue. I still need to head back and get this title again by beating Mihawk."

"Well goodbye for now Zoro, when we meet again, it will be as enemies."

As Kayaba teleported away, Zoro stepped onto the ever so familiar pedestal and went back up to the 99th floor to begin his climb back up to the first floor.

* * *

*On the 74th Floor*

With the final strike, 'The Gleam Eyes' health bar was empty and it pixelated away.

"Is it...over?"

As the Congratulations appeared, Kirito fell back, exhausted and with only a minute amount of health left. His eyes felt heavy as his consciousness left him.

"Kirito-kun! Come on, Kirito-kun!"

Kirito awoke to Asuna above him, teary eyed, calling out his name.

After all the crying and worry was over, Kirito used a Healing Crystal and was back to full health. An announcement was suddenly broadcast to the entire game.

"**Roronoa Zoro has cleared all 100 floors of the Hidden Dungeon, The Santoryu Kenshi has cleared the Hidden Dungeon."**

Everyone in the boss room froze at the news.

"What the heck?! Someone cleared that thing?!" one of the army soldiers shouted.

"What? What is the Hidden Dungeon?" Klein asked.

"It's a dungeon below the Black Iron Palace, the mobs there are insanely strong, about level 50 or so, and the boss is said to be even stronger!"

"A dungeon like that exist? And someone cleared it?"

"Santoryu Kenshi…" Kirito said.

Everyone turned to see Kirito.

"Apparently I wasn't the only one who got a Unique Skill, I got Dual Blades, but he got Santoryu… Someone like that doesn't go unnoticed and I am sure I have never seen him before."

No one else had seen him either.

"My guess is that he has been in that dungeon since the game started, or at least within the first month during the mass suicides. He has been there for two years, training continuously without dying somehow. Soloing that insane dungeon."

"But that's impossible, even our bests couldn't get as far as half the dungeon before having to retreat!" the army soldier cried out.

"We should all just forget about it for now, it might be a system malfunction or something." Klein attempted to calm everyone down.

"Yeah, I guess so…"

* * *

A/N: I am going to be continuing this story until the end because I feel like it, it will take a while as I sometimes switch other to other things. I have the story mostly planned out in my head so updates will come quicker. Please Review, it really encourages me.


	3. Chapter 3: The Black Swordsman

On the first floor of the hidden dungeon, Thinker was trapped, with the powerful boss mob "**The Fatal Scythe V7" **guarding the way out to the surface, he was forced to seek shelter in the safe zone.

"Damn that Kibaou! I need to get back to the guild! It's been three days already, surely someone would have noticed I was gone? Yulier-san should! Then again, Kibaou might have gotten rid of her too. Damn it!"

Looking out the door, Thinker saw the name of the boss in the hallway, waiting to ambush any people coming down here.

"I can't take it anymore! I need to get out of here now!"

Thinker drew his sword and ran straight towards the exit, regardless of whether he would die or not, he was determined to at get back and save his guild or die trying.

"Hyaaaaaa!"

'I can only block one hit, I need to use the hit to send me flying towards the exit so I can get away.'

As he was just at the intersection where the boss came out, he jumped and used his sword to block behind him and the scythe came and tried to cut him. The hit was so strong that the sword's durability was instantly brought down to zero and it shattered, sending Thinker flying. Low on health, Thinker ran as fast as he could down the hallway when suddenly "**The Fatal Scythe V7" **appeared in front of him.

'It teleported?!"

As the scythe once again came for Thinker, he used his arms to try and shield himself from the blow. He shut his eyes, waiting for the blow.

"**Kitsunebi-ryu: Karyu Issen!"**(Fox-Fire Style: Flaming Flash!)

Upon hearing the voice, he opened his eyes and saw a green haired swordsman sheathing his sword and the boss enveloped in flames before it broke into pixels.

"Tsk, damn bosses respawning, well at least when they get stronger it's not by too much. Now I'm back here again, great." Zoro complained as he drank some more sake.

Shocked that this player had managed to take out the boss in a single hit, Thinker was frozen on the spot.

'Who is this guy? Forget that, what is he doing down here anyway? Did Yulier send him?'

"Umm, who are you?"

"Huh? I'm Roronoa Zoro, you okay? What you doing down here?"

"I'm Thinker, I was trapped here three days ago by someone."

"I see, do you know the way out? I'm kinda lost in here."

"Yea… I can bring you out if you protect me."

"Perfect! Then lead the way."

"Right…"

As Zoro and Thinker walked, Thinker was in deep thought.

'Roronoa Zoro, where have I heard that name before…'

Thinker looked over to Zoro's waist and saw that he had three sword sheaths tied to him.

"Why do you have three swords?"

"Huh? O, cause I'm a Santoryu Kenshi, I use three blades to fight."

"Three blades?! How?! I have only heard of The Black Swordsman wielding more than one blade!"

"The Black Swordsman? I would love to fight him then." A grin appeared on Zoro's face as he slashed another **Scavenger Toad**.

"Now I remember where I heard your name from! You're the guy from the announcement those weeks ago! You cleared this dungeon?!"

"Yea, so?"

"But this dungeon's first floor is even harder than the 50th floor of the one on top!"

"Really? Then I guess that makes my job easier."

"What?!"

"I'm getting you guys out of here!"

Thinker was shocked into silence, as they turned a corner, they saw four people in front of them.

"Thinker! Your safe!"

"Yulier-san!"

They both ran to hug each other as Zoro walked towards the Swordsman garbed in black with two sword handles visible behind his head. Kirito and Asuna examined the green haired swordsman as he approached them with his signature grin.

"You're The Black Swordsman?" Zoro said gripping his swords.

"That's what they call me, I assume you're the guy from the announcement weeks ago, The Santoryu Kenshi?" Kirito admitted, sizing Zoro up as he grabbed the handle of his Elucidator.

"I guess my reputation precedes me, would you by any chance be interested in a spar? If you impress me I'll help you clear the floors."

"Wait Kirito-kun, I don't think it's such a good idea." Asuna added.

"Papa…"

"We don't have much of a choice, the floors are getting harder and harder, the next floor is one of the tougher ones."

"So do we have an agreement?"

"Yes, let's get going then, we can decide where to fight after we get out of here."

"Fine by me."

* * *

In the arena where Kirito fought Heathcliff, Zoro and Kirito stood staring at each other. The arena was once again filled with players from all over Aincrad.

"Let's make this more interesting shall we? How about we make it a fight to the death?"

"What?! There's no way Kirito-kun will agree to that right?" Asuna yelled from the stands.

"But here's the trade off, if you impress me, I'll give you five of these and even let you live." Zoro suggested holding out a gold crystal crystal shaped exactly like the revival item.

"The Revival Item?!"

"Actually they're **Immortality Crystals**, anyone who uses this will be sent back to the starter town as a level one if they die instead of having their brains fried."

"Hmm…" Kirito closed his eyes in deep thought.

'I would be able to protect Asuna, Klein, Agil and Yui with it...'

"So how bout it?"

"You have a deal, but you better not be lying!"

"O, I never lie."

As the timer counted down to the start of the match, Kirito drew his Dark Repulsor and Elucidator, Zoro drew Shusui

"**5...4...3...2...1...Begin!"**

Kirito charged in with his two blades and immediately initiated the his signature sword skill on Zoro.

"**Starburst Stream!" **(50-Hit)

Using only one sword, Zoro effortlessly blocked all 50 hits of the attack at insane speeds, even the 15 hit "Corkscrew" was completely blocked.

"You're gonna need to do better than that to even stand a chance at beating me kid,"

With that, Kirito jumped away and noticed Zoro had changed his stance.

"**Ittoryu: Sanjuroku Pound Ho!" **(One Sword Style: 36 Pound Cannon!)

As the burst of compressed air flew towards Kirito, he crossed his swords and activated Cross Block to block it but the attempt was futile as he was blown away by the force of the blast. Looking at his health bar, he saw that he was already at 16,000/18,500 hp.

'He's strong! In one hit he reduced so much of my health!"

"What? You done already kid? I thought you were tougher than that! That was one of my weakest techniques! Show me the power of The Black Swordsman!"

'I need to find a way to catch him off guard if I want to even touch him!'

"I'll give you a free hit kid, come on!"

Grabbing the opportunity, Kirito went straight for a Dual Horizontal at Zoro's waist. The swords cut at both Zoro's sides, but did not go deep at all, barely leaving a flesh wound.

"Really? That's all you got? I barely felt that."

'Maybe if I use multiple chained one sword techniques I can catch him by surprise.'

He ran up to Zoro, both swords glowing, with his barrage of out of sync hits catching Zoro by surprise, Kirito found an opening while switching between Vertical and Horizontal and managed to slash at Zoro's left leg.

"Purposely attacking out of sync to make predicting more difficult for me, but it won't work again."

Zoro drew his second sword, Sandai Kitetsu and changed stance once again.

"**Nitoryu: Nigiri Hirameki!" **(Two Sword Style: Double Slash Flash!)

As the two compressed air projectiles flew towards Kirito, instead of blocking, Kirito tried to dodge them. One hit the ground beside him but the other was a direct hit on his right shoulder.

"Ugh!"

Asuna, Yui, Klein, Agil and many others that were gathered in the seats gasped as they saw the scene unfold.

"Go Kirito-kun, I know you can do it!"

"Papa! Ganbatte!"

"Kirito! I know you can do it! Beat that Santoryu Kenshi's ass!"

"Kirito! If you fail here, I'll never forgive you! I'm going to burn all my merchandise if you don't come back safely!"

'Damn, I didn't dodge in time! Now I'm down to 11,000 hp! I need to be faster! Everyone's counting on me!"'

Kirito grabbed five throwing needles from his belt and threw it towards Zoro as he ran for a slice while Zoro was distracted. Unfortunately, Zoro had anticipated it this time and used one sword to block the needles while the other countered Kirito's two blades as they came for a diagonal slash.

"Heh, pretty neat trick you have there. But it won't work on me that easily!"

Zoro jumped back and readied his stance.

"**Nitoryu: Nanajuni Pound Ho!"** (Two Sword Style: 72 Pound Cannon!)

As Zoro launched the compressed air projectiles once more, Kirito tried to counter them by launching his own.

"**Double Circular!" **(2-Hit)

The projectiles collided with each other and dissipated.

"Still have some tricks up your sleeves I see, interesting. Well then I guess I should take you just a bit more seriously."

Zoro drew his Wado Ichimonji and clamped down on it with his mouth. Kirito readied himself as was about to witness first hand the power of The Santoryu Kenshi. Kirito ran up to Zoro and initiated his sword skill.

"**Nightmare Rain!" **(16-Hit)

Kirito's blades continuously slashed downwards at Zoro, the speed of the slices forced Zoro to only parry the attacks. The end of the combo, a jump-spin slash, caused Zoro to be knocked back slightly.

'Tsk, he's tougher than I thought he would be, this will be a good fight."

Kirito did not let up the attack and immediately activated another sword skill.

"**Shine Circular!" **(15-Hit)

The 15 hit combo came as a surprise for Zoro as multiple waves of compressed air were sent flying at him at close range. Through a combination of luck and skill, Zoro managed to only get hit by one of the projectiles. It had cut his waist slightly and left him open for a moment. This brief moment was all Kirito had needed to land a deadly strike on Zoro.

"**Countless Spike!" **(4-Hit)

His two swords slash at Zoro's two front diagonals then they were put together and aimed to pierce the middle of the two diagonals slashes, Zoro did little but smile as the attack connected. He jumped back and once more changed his stance."

"You're doing better than I ever expected you to, truly the title of The Black Swordsman fits you nicely. But, you still have a long way to go before you can surpass me!"

Zoro posed and readied himself to attack.

"**Ichi Gorilla, Ni Gorilla, Nigori-Zake!" **(One Gorilla, Two Gorilla, Two Arm Strength Slash!)

Kirito activated Cross Block again and tried to block the attack. Zoro's three sword tips all clashed against the middle of Kirito's Cross Block. The clashing of steel caused sparks to fly. As Zoro continued to push against Kirito's Cross Block, Kirito kept on pressing his swords, trying to push back Zoro somehow. With one final push, Zoro sent Kirito flying into the wall of the arena.

The audience gasped as one of their strongest players was sent flying by a single attack. Kirito looked at his health bar and saw that even with battle healing, it had gone down to 9,000/18,500, putting him in the orange zone. He looked at Zoro's bar and saw that it was at 19,800/20,000.

_A/N: Remember his actual stats are hidden, his health is actually at 990,000/1,000,000 hp + he has the 50% Damage Reduction __**System Bypass**__. Also keep in mind that he has no armor so he takes quite a lot of damage._

'Impossible! My entire barrage of attacks only hurt him by 200 hp?!'

"I have to admit, I didn't think you would be able to hold it back for so long!"

"What the hell kind of defense do you have! All my attacks barely scratched you!"

"Maybe if you win I'll tell you! Now come!"

Kirito charged at Zoro holding both swords out.

"**End Revolver!" **(2-Hit)

Zoro blocked both sword tips with Shusui and Sandai Kitetsu, then slashed at Kirito's already injured right shoulder with Wado Ichimonji.

"Argh!"

Everyone spectating was stunned as they saw Kirito's right arm fall to the ground and break into pixels, The Elucidator fell and embedded itself into the ground. Now with an extremely panicked look on his face, Kirito jumped back, the full weight of what he had agreed to finally hitting him.

"Now what will you do, Kuro Kenshi! I took of your arm, you're at a disadvantage now!"

Kirito charged back in with a One Handed sword skill.

"**Vorpal Strike!" **(1-Hit)

Kirito's Dark Repulsor glowed yellow as he thrusted it straight at Zoro, forcing Zoro to block the strike with his three swords, giving Kirito time to attack again.

"**Serration Wave!" **(1-Hit)

The attack stunned Zoro slightly and impeded his movement, Kirito followed up with another powerful attack.

"**Howling Octave!"** (8-Hit)

Kirito quickly stabbed Zoro's chest five times before slashing his sword downwards, then upwards, finishing with another, more powerful, upwards slash. The force of the slash knocked Zoro into the air before he fell down on the ground. Taking the opportunity of Zoro being vulnerable, Kirito used one of his finisher moves.

"**Sharp Nail!" **(3-Hit)

Kirito stabbed his blade into Zoro's front three times continuously at high speeds. Recovered from the shock, Zoro used his swords to knock Kirito away and got back up to his feet. He looked at his hp and at Kirito's. He was at 19,500/20,000 and Kirito was at 6,000/16,000 (Max Health Temporarily Lowered Due To Severed Limb).

"You've really done a number on me kid, I commend you for managing to bring me down that much at all, but I'm gonna win."

"I can still fight, Zoro! Even if you take my other arm off, I'm not going to give up until I win!"

"Well said…" Zoro said as he grinned and readied his stance for another attack.

"**Yasha Garasu!" **(Demonic Raven!)

Zoro launched himself off the ground and flew towards Kirito, thrusting all his swords forwards as he flew. Kirito tried to block the attacks best he could with only one arm but to no avail. Some hits had managed to get through, creating a multiple cuts in the shape of a Crow's Feet along his body and arms. Zoro was unrelenting and launched another attack straight at Kirito directly after his barrage of thrusts.

"**Hyakuhachi Pound Ho!" **(108 Pound Cannon!)

Kirito was blown back as the three compressed air projectiles merged together and stuck him square in the chest. Walking over to Kirito's limp form, Zoro looked down on Kirito.

"Kirito!" the spectators all shouted in shock.

"Ready to give up yet?"

"No…" Kirito strained as he struggled to get back on his feet.

"I'm never going to give up!"

"Then come at me! Kuro Kenshi!"

Kirito charged Zoro again, starting with a block breaker.

"**Meteor Break!" **(3-Hit)

Kirito knocked Zoro's three swords away and continued his assault with another combo attack.

"**Star Quint Prominence!" **(6-Hit)

Kirito's sword glowed and slashed Zoro six times, forming an asterisk of cuts, using the momentum of his hits, Kirito activated his Ultimate One Handed Skill.

"**Phantom Rave!"** (6-Hit)

He slashed at Zoro continuously six times at unbelievably high speed. After the barrage of hits, Zoro jumped back, actually injured by the multiple continuous barrage of sword skills, he spat out some blood on the ground and wiped the rest off. He was now at 19,100/20,000 and Kirito was at a mere 2,000.

"Didn't expect you to be so proficient at using only one sword, but I think it's time I finish this…"

Zoro sheathed Wado Ichimonji and Sandai Kitetsu, wielding only Shusui, he closed his eyes and breathed in and out deeply before he suddenly disappeared.

"**Ittoryu: Sanbyakurokuji Pound Shogeki!" **(One Sword Style: 360 Pound Bombardment)

Running at speeds incomprehensible to human eyes, Zoro circled around Kirito and fired off ten '36 Pound Cannons' at him.

Confused by the attacks coming at him from nearly all directions, there was little that Kirito could do to avoid them and so he braced himself for the attack to come. As the hits struck him, he felt like a pinball, battered around in all directions. A massive dust cloud was created by the attacks. As the dust cleared, Kirito was seen standing, with his arm limp and head facing down. Zoro had stopped and sheathed Shusui, as the sword clicked into the sheathe, Kirito fell forward and broke into pixels.

"**Winner: Roronoa Zoro!"**

"Kirito-kun!"

"Papa!"

"Kirito!" both Klein and Agil yelled.

"Hahahaha! He's gone! That bastard of a Beater is dead! I may have been expelled from the guild, but at least I get to see that beater's demise!"

The crowd looked over and saw Kibaou laughing maniacally as he rejoiced over Kirito's death.

Asuna grabbed her Lambent Light and was about to attack Kibaou when Agil put his hand over his shoulder and shook his head.

"Hey look over there!" Klein suddenly shouted.

The audience looked back to the arena and saw a familiar giant cloaked figure appear.

"Now now Zoro, why did you have to go and kill my favourite player?"

"I guess I got a bit too carried away."

"Well, regardless of that, you should know, I will only allow you to enter the boss fight once five people die by the boss."

"Well then you better tell that to Kirito after you revive him then."

"Don't worry I will, now I suggest you take a break. You will be given a notification once four people die on a boss. Once the fifth dies, you will be teleported in his place to fight the boss. I have no doubt you will annihilate it instantly which is why I have set the conditions as such."

With that, a bright light enveloped Zoro as he was transported to a distant location. Kayaba opened up his interface.

"System Command: Revive Player: Kirito ."

Pixels reformed Kirito's body as he was revived, upon opening his eyes, Kirito saw that Kayaba had appeared and for some reason revived him.

"Everyone, Roronoa Zoro has been impressed and will help you in your boss battles!"

The audience rejoiced as they heard the good news. Cheers erupted from the audience as they now had such a powerful player on their side and thought that clearing the game would be a breeze now.

"However! I will only allow him into the battle after five people have fallen! There is an exception though, if you beat him in a duel, I will allow him to fight in every single boss battle once only one person has died. He is now hidden on the first floor. Fight well clearers, for five people a floor is no small number." Kayaba's body started to fade away.

As Kayaba left, silence fell over the arena, the previous joy was crushed by the conditions. To get through a floor using Zoro, they basically had to sacrifice five people. Meaning that it was only useful as a last resort. Kirito was still in a daze from being resurrected and after taking in what had happened, he quickly ran back to the meeting point he and the others had agreed on. No one noticed him slipping away as most had started discussing among themselves and gossiping rumors around what had happened.

* * *

Back in Agil's shop, the group was assembled in the back room with troubled looks on their faces.

"Kayaba showed up, in two years he never showed his face and never said a word. What was so special about today? Does Zoro have something to do with him?" Kirito questioned.

"It seems pretty strange to me, but that Zoro guy was ridiculously strong, I saw both of your health bars, his barely went down from any of your attacks and healed extremely slowly, like he had some kind of low level battle healing. Your battle healing is almost maxed out, so you healed pretty fast, but those attacks he threw at you…" Agil added.

"It was like he threw the slice of his sword! I mean some sword skills make your swords hit a bit farther but those looked like they could really fly!" Klein exclaimed.

"He only used attacks that threw those air blades at you, he didn't really run at you with his swords, but all your attacks were deflected easily and he even said that he was going easy. He killed you while he was going easy, what if he comes back and this time he kills you for real! You can't let that happen to you Kirito-kun, I'm not allowing you to die again!"

"I promise I won't Asuna, so stop worrying, it's strange though, why would Kayaba revive me for?"

"You don't suppose maybe Zoro is some kind of experiment that broke loose do you? His name wasn't on the Monument of Life after all. Maybe Kayaba wanted to use him for something, but he killed you and it went against what Kayaba had planned so he tried to fix everything?"

"It's possible, but I don't know Agil, it seemed too off."

"He could just be a programme! I mean he wasn't on The Monument of Life what if he's some kind of ghost programme Kayaba wanted to use if we started lazing around instead of clearing the game?"

"Hmm…"

As Kirito thought on the idea, he suddenly got a notification. He had received a message from Roronoa Zoro. He opened the message.

'**Here are your Immortality Crystals, you're pretty good with the swords. I expect you to come and face me again, of course I won't kill you again, Kayaba wouldn't like that. I will be on the first floor if you ever want to try and fight me. Go train in the hidden dungeon first, but don't fight the bosses, they get stronger every time they respawn and I think I killed them a lot of times on my way back so most of them are on V5+ or something. With your skill, you should be able to barely take on an infinite wave of scavenger toads. Also, Kayaba said to give the kid the extra item that comes with the message. I'll be waiting.'**

**Items Attached: Immortality Crystals (5), Memory Crystal (1)**

"It's from Zoro, he wasn't lying, he gave me the crystals, but he apparently knows Kayaba personally and wants me to give this to Yui for Kayaba."

"See I told you! He's a programme! I say we delete those items! They could be poisonous or something."

"But what if it has Yui's memory in it, it is a memory crystal…" Asuna said.

"Yui, what do you think?"

"I'll try it, if it gives me my memory back it may help understand what's going on."

Yui took the crystal from Kirito, but when she activated it, something different happened. The top of the crystal opened up and hexagonal pixels came out of it. The pixels flew into Yui's eyes. Yui froze as a stream of pixels continued to flow out of the crystal into her eyes. As it completed its job, the crystal close back up and then shattered.

After a few moments, Yui blinked, regaining her senses… she heard people calling her name.

"Yui!"

"Yui!"

"Yui-chan!"

"Oi! Yui!"

She blinked again and looked around. Everyone was now crowded around her.

"What happened?" Yui finally responded.

"You were not responsive after that crystal shot some kind of beam into your eyes!"

"Yui are you okay?!"

"I think I'm fine…Agh!"

Yui suddenly clutched her head and closed her eyes as she grunted.

"Yui! What's happening?!"

After a while, Yui calmed down and looked back at everyone.

"I remember everything…"

* * *

A/N: Review for faster updates, it encourages me to write and not give up on a story.


	4. Chapter 4: The Skull Reaper

In a flash of light, Zoro was transported to an area similar to the arena where he fought Asura, only it was significantly larger. He walked around and saw there were various buttons in the room he spawned in. They were labeled with different words.

In a few moments, Kayaba appeared in his usual lab-coated form.

"Ah Zoro, you'll be staying here for now, this place is an arena I built for you to train, the only way up here is a set of stairs which players have to clear out to reach the spectators stands. Now these buttons here, each push spawns a different variant of Asura for you to fight. From left to right, the first is an Asura that wields six swords all in their upgraded forms. The second will be wielding two of its gigantic blades, each with three arms on either side. The third will wield, similar to you, nine swords. The fourth will be an incredibly fast version of the first."

Miniature holograms of the bosses appeared below the buttons.

"The fifth one will be like the second, only with twice as much health, feel free to spawn multiple of them once you get comfortable with them. They get stronger after each death. Use them to train up and become stronger, many people will be coming after you. The last button will take you to the resting area."

Zoro tested all the bosses with breaks in between. The resting area was a bar with the song Bink's sake playing in the background. The grinding area had a huge gate, a lever opened and closed it. When opened, waves and waves of different mobs would flood through which he easily cut up. A week passed as he continued to grind Asuras, two at a time, developing and testing new techniques along the way.

* * *

After sorting everything out with Yui and everyone else, Kirito went off to the Hidden Dungeon, he remembered that he had easily taken out those frogs. Entering the dungeon, Kirito drew his blades and headed into the deeper parts of the dungeon, after the point where he encountered Zoro. As he continued exploring, he heard a wave of croaking in the distance. He turned back to see a swarm of Scavenger Toads, he couldn't see the end of them, the army of toads stretched to the opposite end of the hall and beyond.

'How did I miss this? Is this what Zoro meant by an infinite wave of Scavenger Toads?!'

Kirito drew his swords and prepared himself to grind the frogs as long as he could. A few hours passed and as predicted by Zoro, his battle healing and parrying allowed him to lose just a few point of health throughout the fight. The toads were endless in numbers and the swarm had only ended days later, Kirito immediately used a Teleport Crystal to get out. He was mentally exhausted and starving from the long grinding. He had not trained this hard in quite some time, he even forced his mind to ignore the hunger and thirst urges and focus on the battle.

Kirito went to Asuna's home to get some food. Upon arriving, he saw her cooking in the kitchen, the smell reached his nose and his stomach growled loudly.

"Kirito-kun! You look terrible, what have you been doing in that dungeon?!"

"I was cornered, those frogs we met at the entrance, thousands of them came after me when I went deeper into the dungeons. My Battle Healing allowed me to lose minimal health, but it tired me out. I can see why Zoro was so strong…"

'The amount of experience points and col I got from them went up as I leveled up, they seemed to scale in strength with me as well. That means that I train there without having to need to kill a lot more for each level.'

"Kirito-kun, you need to rest, you look really worn out." Kirito slumped as Asuna hurried to support him and sat him at the table.

"I'm fine! I have to get stronger, if I beat Zoro, it will decrease the number of deaths drastically! I'm the only one who stands a chance against him and his Santoryu!"

Asuna handed him some of the stew she had made and sat across from him.

"You need to get your energy up, if you don't eat anything for too long you'll collapse, not even you can be able to ignore hunger for too long."

Kirito wolfed down bowl after bowl of the stew that Asuna had made, at some point Yui had entered the room and was enjoying a lollipop Asuna had prepared.

"Aah, thanks Asuna, I feel much better now, I guess it wasn't such a good idea to just go storming in like that, sorry to worry you both."

"Papa, you better not be down there for too long, Mama and I get lonely!"

"It's fine Kirito-kun, just don't do something like that again. The boss fight meeting is next week at noon, make sure not to be late."

"I guess I should rest for a while, thanks for the food Asuna, I'll go meet Agil and then head out tomorrow."

"Be careful Kirito-kun!"

"Papa, bye bye! Make sure not to do anything reckless!"

* * *

'I guess I should rest up at home, those frogs took forever to clear out, I got enough Scavenger Toad Meat to feed a village for a year. Agil should be bringing those to the orphanage soon, I should get something for Asuna and Yui on my way back...'

As Kirito continued his journey through the world, a figure clad in black watched silently as Kirito entered and left stores for supplies. He used his palm to push up his glasses one more time before disappearing into the darkness of the shadows.

* * *

The week had passed and the boss meeting was held, Asuna had brought Yui along and told her to sit quietly while the grown ups were talking as the meeting was serious. Some of the players seemed nervous and on edge, wary of Kirito after what had happened.

"Based on what information we have, the boss is not visible at first. Our main reconnaissance team went in to investigate, only for the door to close behind them. When the door opened a few minutes later, the room was empty and there was no sign of them." Heathcliff summarized.

"An invisible boss?!" one of the players exclaimed.

"We don't know for sure, but it's possible, nearly anything is possible for this boss. It will be much harder than anything we've faced before, this will be the last of the quarter bosses before the final boss. Based on the scouts who were outside, they managed to catch a glimpse of the boss room before the door closed. From their description, there were large platforms around the main area, it is also significantly larger than any of the boss rooms on the previous floors." Heathcliff explained.

"I guess it's safe to assume that the platforms will be part of one of the boss' phases and that it is an anti-crystal zone, same as last floor, seeing as the scout team did not use their supplied crystals." Kirito hypothesized.

"Well of course you'd would know that! You're working with Kayaba! I bet you'll betray us later and just stab us in the back!" One of the more paranoid KOB members accused.

"I'm want to get out of this place as much as everyone else does! I just wanted to help us escape here faster by getting Zoro on our side, which I succeeded to some extent!"

"Yea, but you got revived by Kayaba! You gotta be hiding something, there's no way Kayaba would just specially revive you and no one else! You must have struck a deal with him beforehand, where you'd be the only one to go free if all of us died! You rotten Beater!" another player argued.

"Thats right! Even Zoro's help came with the condition of sacrificing ourselves!" a member of the DDA added.

"No one anything about sacrificing!" Asuna corrected.

"Besides, for all we know, that Zoro guy could instead come to kill us when five of us die, he could be a programme or something. After all, he knew Kayaba personally enough to get him to appear in the game after not showing himself for two years when he killed Kirito!" The KOB member theorized.

Yui decided to finally speak up and accessed her databanks to search up information on Zoro. Her face went blank as she summarised what data she had.

"My memory banks state that Zoro is indeed a player, however he entered the game just as the Beta was ending and remained since then. As I analyzed his emotional parameters during his time in the Hidden Dungeon, I found that he took it as a challenge to train himself to be stronger while advancing through the dungeon. He has interacted with Kayaba personally on multiple occasions, usually at the end of floors to negotiate ways to get stronger."

"That just proves that he's working with Kayaba!" a member of one of the smaller clearer guilds shouted.

Ignoring the interruption, Yui continued her report.

"However, the conversation they had near the end was the most enlightening, Kayaba gave Zoro a choice between leaving the game or saving those trapped along with him. Kayaba gave Zoro time to think and would come for the answer upon the defeat of the final boss."

"What was his answer then?" the clearer from earlier asked.

"Unfortunately, I do not possess much data on that as I left my post as the fight was ongoing. I do however, know that he was considering the option after Kayaba left, his emotions showed little conflict and leaned towards sympathy."

"Seeing as he didn't leave, it is safe to say he stayed to help, but was too powerful so Kayaba imposed restrictions on him to prevent us from clearing the game too quickly." Heathcliff inferred.

"Now I suggest that everyone focus on the task at hand so we don't end up losing enough people so that Zoro appears incase your theory is correct." the players looked down uncomfortable and continued with the meeting.

Many players were still suspicious of Kirito and Zoro, but set it aside to focus on the meeting and preparation. The rest of the meeting was quiet and somewhat awkward but the meeting time and place was decided, as well as formations.

* * *

The day for the battle came and some of the clearers backed off when Kirito arrived.

'It's only natural, I was revived by Kayaba, even if I didn't have anything to do with trapping them here, there will always be people like Kibaou who will accuse me of things like helping Kayaba for it'

"Oi, we have to trust each other if we are to work as a team, Kirito-kun would never help Kayaba, he's been fighting alone for so long to help us escape!"

"Asuna…"

The crowd relaxed a bit, but most were still wary. At exactly Twelve, Heathcliff arrived and briefed the clearers. One of the Knights opened up the portal and the clearers to enter. Before the boss door, Heathcliff gave a final speech to rally the troops and opened the door. Everyone charged in, only to notice that the room was empty. They scouted around the boss room and saw that the room had spikes at the bottom of the pit surrounding it. They tried to look into the pit to find the boss but found none.

'Thats strange, the boss usually is at the middle of the room, it was always obv-'

"UP THERE!"

Kirito turned to see one of the Fuurinkazan members pointing at the ceiling, everyone looked up to see the boss. It was a long segmented skeletal monster with two large bone scythes for hands. The moment the boss was noticed, Its health bars and name appeared and the fight started.

"**The Skull Reaper"**

It started jumped off the ceiling and brought its skeletal scythe down on one of the tanks. The tank readied its shield for the impact of the scythe, but it never came. The scythe went straight through the shield and sliced him. He was cleanly cut in two, pixelating into hexagons right before the eyes of his comrades.

"Kirito! You're with me, we need to distract those scythes, they seem to go through shields! The other scythe swung for me but my Shield-Sword was immune to the effect and protected me! The rest of you, attack its body!" Heathcliff shouted orders to the players.

They charged at it and attacked at the boss' weak spine with low cooldown swords skills while switching to heal and rest. Heathcliff and Kirito each blocked one of the scythes, Kirito at first tried to cut at it with one sword while parrying with the other, but it proved futile as his parry was broken by the slash. When using both Elucidator and Dark Repulsor, Kirito had managed to block the scythe well, so he switched to purely blocking and let the other clearers deal damage.

Ten minutes passed without incident, but a sudden scream was heard. From the front, Kirito caught a glimpse of someone pixelating into hexagons. Another of the clearers started running towards the boss.

"Yamada! Damn you, you stupid boss, why did you kill Yamada!"

The clearer started activating sword skills without any regard of the risks. He pounded away at the boss until one of the legs got him, it stabbed straight into his chest and he died. Some of the clearers started panicking and hesitated to attack.

"Everyone, focus, don't panic! We can mourn their losses later, we have to focus on the fight!" Asuna yelled from the side where she was attacking.

With renewed fervour, the remaining clears cleared their heads and continued attacking the boss. In a few moments, one of the boss' health bars got depleted and it changed its attack pattern, signalled by a scream. It jumped backwards and attached itself to the walls, leaving only some of its segments vulnerable. One of the clearers was attacking a leg by the side when it jumped and the leg rammed into him. The clearer was smashed against the wall and fell unconscious, falling into the pit of spikes below.

'That makes four, only one more.' Kayaba disguised as Heathcliff thought to himself as he watched the next phase initiate.

The players repositioned themselves to be able to safely attack the boss, while Kirito and Heathcliff continued to tank the two scythes that tried to cleave into their flesh. Now wary of the dangers, the clearers all played it safe and didn't risk anything. The second health bar was depleted without losses, save a few close calls, and The Skull Reaper returned to the centre of the room.

The third health bar was slowly and carefully being whittled down. Minutes passed as the boss' health went down little by little until it finally reached Zero and broke. Its fourth phase activated with a scream as The Skull Reaper suddenly shifted to a more defensive stance, it had rolled its segments up into a ball. It looked like a snail now, most of its weak spots were hidden, leaving only its tail segment exposed. Now that it had very little exposed, the clearers pulled back for a bit and strategized while Kirito and Heathcliff continued to switch with each other for healing.

The clearers with the highest attacks were chosen to attack the weak spot while the others looked to unconventional ways of attack. Those with the skill tried throwing some poison needles at any higher up exposed segments, while those with claws climbed it to attack, using one hand for attacking and the other to secure themselves.

The boss' health continued to go down at an extremely slow rate, with Kirito and Heathcliff distracting the scythes, the other clearers were relatively safe from harm. The boss' health bar reached zero and its next phase was initiated, the clearers backed off, not wanting to be killed off like the earlier player. The Skull Reaper latched onto the walls and started moving towards one of the platforms. As it was about to reach the platform, it detached half its body into the abyss and jumped to the platform.

"How are we supposed to hit it now?" Klein complained.

The boss' pulled back both its scythe arms as if readying to throw something. Kirito noticed the action and shouted for everyone to duck. The boss threw its scythe arms at the main platform and it barely cut the hair off of Klein's head. As some started lifting their heads, Kirito told them to stay down. The scythes started to boomerang back, nearly taking the heads of some players. with its scythe arms neatly attached, The Skull Reaper leaped back to the main part of the room and nearly crushed one of the DDA members.

The boss was now less vulnerable as it had discarded half of its weak points. The clearers used the same formations and Kirito with Heathcliff resumed distraction of the scythes.

'I'm down to just one **Life Crystal**, I didn't think the fight was going to be this hard.' Kirito thought as he used his second last one.

As the heath bar reached the 90% mark, The Skull Reaper retreated back to one of the surrounding platforms and once again readied its scythes. As the scythes flew, one of the players forgot to duck the second time and the scythe decapitated him. His head rolled onto the ground and his body went limp. The players stared in shock as the fifth clearer was slain, Zoro's criteria had been fulfilled.

'Come Zoro, show them your strength! I think your fight with Kirito has gotten him enough of a reality hit, I feel safe leaving it in his hands now.'

"System Command: Paralyze All ."

All the players were suddenly paralyzed, the boss also stopped moving. Heathcliff however was unaffected.

"What happened?!" a DDA member questioned in panic.

"I told you it was a penalty!" The KOB member from earlier shouted.

"Why is Heathcliff unaffected?" Klein asked.

"Because he's Kayaba," Kirito turned to Heathcliff, "aren't you?"

"Very good Kirito-kun, but how did you find out? I took care to not reveal anything too drastic."

"During our fight, you moved too fast, I figured there was something wrong then."

"Yes, you were too fast for me, I had to use System Assist to block your attack. Now if you excuse me, I have some work to do."

Chatter flared up among the clearers as they all panicked over the new revelation.

"System Command: Full Heal All ."

All the players in the room and the boss was fully healed. Kayaba then teleported all the players on the surrounding platforms and teleported Zoro in front of the boss.

"Now just wait on the platforms while Zoro deals with this."

"So it's finally time for my grand performance huh? Good, I was getting bored over there."

"System Command: Un-Paralyze All ."

The fight began anew as The Skull Reaper's five health bars were replenished. Everyone was eager to watch the fight as Zoro readied himself.

'It's not possible, he shouldn't be able to take down that boss himself no matter how much stronger he is than me! In our fight, from what I could tell, he had high health but his attacks weren't too powerful. I doubt they'll be able to severely damage the boss.' Kirito commented as he watched from the sidelines.

Drawing Shusui, Zoro got into stance as he prepared his attack.

'That's the stance he used when he was launching that attack at me, I think it was the 36 Pound Cannon or something… Wait! Its different somehow, he seems like he's putting more force into it!'

"**Ittoryu: Sanbyakurokuju Pound Ho!" **(One Sword Style: 360 Pound Cannon!)

The compressed air slice flew towards the boss. As it swirled towards its target, the attack didn't lose even an ounce of its strength. The hit connected with the boss, to the surprise of the clearers present, after the cloud of dust from the initial attack cleared, what could be seen, was the attack had gone straight through the boss and left a hole in the wall behind it, just barely missing one of the platforms. The boss was completely annihilated in one attack. Zoro sheathed his sword and as it clicked into the sheath, the boss broke into hexagons and the congratulations appeared.

'He never went all out on me at all! He was completely holding back!'

"Well, looks like my work here is done." Zoro announced as he started to walk out of the door and headed off into the dungeon mist.

"Kirito, you have proven yourself to be able to defeat me in the earlier duel. As without system assist, I would surely have lost. Thus I now entrust a special quest to you, you are to defeat Zoro! Asuna, you will take over the 'Knights of Blood', make sure to train before the next boss fight, Kirito will not be allowed into anymore boss battles until he has defeated Zoro. I bid you all farewell…"

In a flash of light, Kayaba was gone.

* * *

Kayaba appeared in front of Zoro as he was wandering around in the mist.

"Zoro, I know you wanted to look cool and all, but did you really have to go and get yourself lost for the sake of it?"

"Shut up, I'm not lost! The exit is just that way, watch!" Zoro pointed to his left and started running towards the right.

'Ugh why does such a powerful player have to have such a bad navigation sense.' Kayaba complained as he face-palm.

"System Command: Teleport Player to Home: Zoro ."

In a flash of light, Zoro was back to his arena home, with Kayaba next to him.

"I didn't need your help, but whatever, I'll go and train now, call me when the next fight is near."

* * *

A/N: Hello! I'm back from my trip to the land of gaming and now I bring you this chapter for the New Year! Hopefully it will be up to quality and be a good read. If you have any questions or suggestions I'll try to answer them if you contact me. Go review! I like reviews! I'll be working on my other story's next chapter now, so this will take awhile to be updated again.


	5. Chapter 5: Rematch

A/N: I'm back with a Lunar New Year update! My laptop got destroyed so I was stuck having to write with my phone and that was just gruesome and I stopped. Now that I have my new computer, I should be able to put out chapters again, albeit a bit slower because this one is less user friendly. Anyway, on with the story!

* * *

Kirito was in the KOB main office with Asuna as she struggled to keep up with all the virtual paperwork she had to go through. Kirito was completely and utterly devastated by the revelation of just how strong Zoro was. He was sulking in the corner of the room as he continued to think about what to do. Kirito pulled up his quest screen and saw it there, the quest Kayaba had given him.

**Defeat Roronoa Zoro: 0/1**

The description of the quest had given him Zoro's location but he had no idea whether to go and just be more depressed when he found out how much stronger Zoro was then what he saw the day before.

'He was toying with me! That boss was destroyed in one hit, how did it not even occur to me that he was this strong, he soloed the entire Hidden Dungeon!'

"Kirito-kun, stop sulking over there and go train or something, watching you be depressed like that is making it difficult to finish all this paperwork. I bet Kayaba used the system or something to do it, cause this is just ridiculous!"

The call from his loved one broke him from his trance and he was partially back to his old self.

"Sorry Asuna, I was just thinking about Zoro…"

"Look, you don't have to fight him you know, you could just wait for us to clear the boss, I'll make sure everyone survives."

"But I want to help everyone escape too, I've already been branded a Beater, I don't need to make my name any worse for no reason."

"Can't you at least go and look for Yui? She went exploring a while ago and hasn't come back yet."

"Alright then, might as well do something I guess!"

"There's the Kirito-kun I know! Now try not to do anything stupid."

"Sure, sure…"

Kirito got out of the room and went to look for Yui, he found her easily, she was looking at the pictures hung around the castle and had been mesmerized by one which showed a field of beautiful flowers.

"Oi Yui! There you are, Asuna was looking for you, what are you looking at?"

"Papa look! It's so pretty! Can we go there someday?"

Kirito chuckled and ruffled Yui's hair.

"Of course Yui, I'll ask Asuna about it later."

"Yay!"

Just as Kirito opened his mouth to say something, a siren echoed through the world as an message was sent to all the players in the world. Kirito checked his mail to see a letter sent by Heathcliff, better known as Kayaba Akihiko. Kirito froze as he read the letter.

_Greetings Players, I have set up a special event for all of you, in this letter you will receive a Teleport Crystal. This crystal is set to activate at Noon today and will take you all to where Zoro is, there will be a dungeon to clear if you wish to see him. Those who don't want to risk death can choose to delete the crystal from the inventory at the end of this message. Kirito, I wish you luck in your quest to defeat Zoro, you'll need it._

Kirito ran off to the Hidden Dungeon to get some last minute training done before Noon.

"Yui! Tell Asuna I will join her at the Teleport!"

'There's a good chance I'll have to fight Zoro again, I need to get stronger before that happens!'

Kirito went back to the corner he was stuck at last time and waited. Soon enough, the sound of distant croaks could be heard as the frog army approached. Kirito drew his blades and charged towards the frogs, slashing and slicing as the army surrounded him. He continued to attack the endless toad army while mentally fortifying himself for seeing Zoro again.

* * *

As Zoro slayed his thousandth Asura, Kayaba teleported into the arena.

"Oi Kayaba, what's with this event you're gonna use me for?"

"Nothing much, I just want to show them how strong you really are."

"I obliterated that boss in one hit, I don't think they need to see much else."

"But they haven't seen your Asura form yet, I bet it'll scare the daylights outta Kirito when you suddenly become three times stronger than what you showed back on Floor 75."

"Keh, just make sure they stay out of my way."

"Will do, they'll take some time to clear the dungeon so you can relax for a while."

"I guess I'll go and get some Sake then, I'll need it if I intend to actually relax. Maybe I'll take another nap, I still got tons of time till they get here."

Zoro yawned and headed to the rest area.

"Hahaha, you never cease to amaze me Zoro…"

* * *

The promised time came and the players who still had their crystals were teleported to the foot of the tower.

A few prominent figures were present in the crowd. There was Asuna the leader of KOB, Kirito the Beater, Klein the leader of Fuurinkazan and everyone's favourite shopkeeper, Agil.

"I wonder if I'll find any new rare items in here?" Agil questioned.

"I bet there are pretty babes in there waiting for me!" Klein exclaimed.

Kirito and Asuna both looked at the tower and saw that it reached far above the skyline.\

It was when they looked down that they saw cloaked figure enter the tower,

"Hey, it's not safe in there!"

Kirito ran in to see a bunch of mobs burst into looked around and saw no sign of the person. He decided to continue upwards and fought the mobs. The rest of the group eventually joined him and progressed up the tower. They found that the mobs got harder and harder the higher up they went. After what felt like an eternity, they reached the top and found themselves in an arena. In the arena, they saw two people. Kirito recognized one of them as Zoro and the other as the cloaked figure he saw previously, but he was holding something in his hand.

* * *

"Who the heck are you? What do you think you are doing down here, it's dangerous!?"

The person in front of Zoro threw his cloak into the air, revealing himself.

"Um… Who are you?"

"It's me! Captain Kuro!"

"Err… Nope doesn't ring a bell."

"I was the most cunning pirate in East Blue!"

"Hmm… Nah, can't remember!"

Kuro was frustrated and immediately threw the case he held into the air and it opened mid-flight, the claws fell from their container and slot themselves on Kuro's hands.

"Then I'll just have to make you remember!"

"**Nuki Ashi: Kyuukyoku Keishiki!" **(Stealth Walk: Ultimate Form!)

Kuro disappeared from sight as he activated his ability, Zoro was unphased by this, but the crowd of players now occupying the coliseum seats were. Slashes started forming all over the ground as Kuro cut and cleaved at anything he saw. One of the slices got directed at Zoro who didn't even flinch nor draw his blade.

"**Mutoryu: Shinken Shirahatori to Hakai!" **(No Sword Style: Sword Catch and Destroy)

To the audience and Kuro's surprise, Zoro had caught all ten of Kuro's blades. Each of Zoro's fingers held a blade and snapped them cleanly in half.

"You're a hundred years too early to challenge me!"

"Grr… Ragh!"

Kuro charged at Zoro with his broken claws in a last ditch attempt to kill him.

"A weakling like you isn't even worth my time!"

"**Mutoryu: O Tatsumaki!" **(No Sword Style: Great Dragon Twister!)

The technique was originally a Santoryu technique, but Zoro's intensive training had enabled him to do it without swords. The twister span and continued to hack at Kuro until the last bit of his health trickled away. Following a cloud of hexagons, the twister dissipated, leaving behind a cloud of dust.

Zoro looked around and saw the crowd at the edge of their seats. He moved over to one of the buttons and pressed the fifth one. The Asura spawned and the players all jumped back in fright, the monster towered over them. They started panicking over the sheer intimidation of the mob.

"What is that thing!?"

"He's crazy, he's gonna fight this!?"

"There's no way he'll live through this!"

Kirito looked at the massive construct and examined it, it was apparently so strong that even his heightened Observation skill could not identify it.

'This must be the boss for the hundredth Hidden Dungeon floor, I didn't upgrade observation for Floor Hundred because we already knew Kayaba would be the boss of the top floor. This boss looks insane, the two swords it's carrying look extremely dangerous.'

Zoro moved to the centre to face Asura and drew his katanas. He got into stance and smirked.

"I haven't used this move in a long time, guess I should get some practice in.

"**Kiki Kyutoryu: Asura!" **(Demon Spirit Nine Sword Style: Asura!)

To the amazement of the crowd, Zoro suddenly grew four arms and two heads.

'What!? That's ridiculous! He's even stronger than what he showed yesterday?! How am I supposed to defeat that?!'

"**Kiki Kyutoryu: Asura: Tengoku Tsuranuku no Ugui!" **(Demon Spirit Nine Sword Style: Asura: Heaven Piercing Drill!)

Zoro launched himself at Asura, the impact was solid and the boss struggled to withstand the attack. Asura's health bar continued to drain as Zoro's Heaven Piercing Drill continued to bore into it. Nearing the end of its life, Asura's armor plated covering gave way and Zoro drilled through the great Buddha, collapsing it into a pile that broke into hexagons.

Zoro looked up and saw the people all at the edge of their seats, eager to see if anything would happen next. He spotted Kirito in the corner with his mouth opened, shocked that Zoro had destroyed the boss in a single hit. Zoro went over to the centre and raised his swords to the air.

"Is there anyone here who wants to fight me?! I will take up any challenger!"

The clearers went quiet at the announcement and no one moved. They were all too shocked by the challenge to do anything. A single hand was raised and the figure was teleported to the centre.

"So you want to fight me huh?"

"I hope you put up a good fight then!"

"I just hope I'll be able to leave alive."

"Oh don't worry about that, I'll be sure to leave some of your health left, Kayaba wasn't too pleased when I killed you last time. I'll give you a handicap even, I'll only use one sword."

Zoro drew Sandai Kitetsu and assumed his stance.

"I appreciate the sentiment."

"Be careful though, this one's a bit blood-thirsty!"

Zoro charged Kirito and caught him by surprise. He parried the attack and jumped back for some time to think.

'I can't use Sword Skills when fighting against him, they reveal too much about where I will attack, giving him signals when dodging.'

Kirito focused his thoughts and recalled his Niten Ichi-ryu training, he closed his eyes and tried to relax. He sensed an attack coming from Zoro and instinctively moved to block it with his Dark Repulsor while he swung his Elucidator in an attempt to get a hit on Zoro.

The blade of the weapon cut into Zoro, leaving a red wound where it struck. Zoro was caught off guard by the sudden strike and Kirito used this as an opportunity to follow up on his earlier attack. With his Dark Repulsor now free, Kirito swung it in an attempt to build up a combo of attacks while he had the chance. At the same time, he swung his Elucidator at the side, effectively pincering Zoro, who only had one sword to block with.

Zoro blocked the sword coming at his right and quickly flicked it in order to parry the one coming at his left. Awed by Zoro's sudden burst in speed, Kirito couldn't build up the strength to pull back his blade and it pulled him back. Now with breathing room, Zoro initiated his attack.

"**Ittoryu: Baki!" **(One Sword Style: Horse Demon!)

The attack came flying towards Kirito and he parried it with both swords in an effort to prevent injury. The force of the attack pressed Kirito down onto one knee as he pushed off the sword and proceeded to strike at Zoro's chest while he was vulnerable. Kirito inflicted two clean horizontal slashes on Zoro's chest in the opening which did minimal damage. Zoro regained his footing and eyed Kirito like a predator would its prey.

"You've improved since we last crossed blades. I look forward to seeing you grow as a swordsman. Though you'll need a lot to surpass me boy!"

"**Ittoryu: Daishinkan!" **(One Sword Style: Great Dragon Shock!)

Zoro's hit connected with Kirito's two blades as he tried to block to strike, the force of the strike forced Kirito back a fair distance, he managed to stay strong and maintain his block but the shockwave had damaged him a good deal. He felt Zoro put more force into the strike and slowly drain whatever strength he had left. Zoro pushed one final time and broke Kirito's guard, his sword went for blood and cut Kirito's chest and a gaping gash opened. Kirito howled in pain as the katana wounded him. He backed away and found his vision fading, he looked up to see that he only had five percent of his health remaining.

Kirito collapsed onto the ground where Zoro walked over and picked him up before pushing one of the wall buttons and disappearing.

"Kirito-kun!"

Asuna struck against the barrier violently in an attempt to reach her beloved.

"Now now Asuna, Zoro didn't kill him yet. The barrier is blocking us from entering anyway so we can only wait. Remember, Zoro is a player like us and has proven to not be completely blood-thirsty, if not he would have simply used that whatever Kyutoryu and killed Kirito in an instant."

"Klein's right, the only thing we can do now is wait and hope. Our best bet right now would be to see if Yui can do anything."

"Yeah, you're right Agil, I'll go check on Yui."

* * *

A/N: That felt rushed, but then again I think I made Zoro a tad too powerful to the point where the story goes too fast... I'll try and get the next chapter done soon, though the new laptop is killing me with all its issues. In other news, It was announced at Katsucon that Sword Art Online II will air on Adult Swim starting March 28, at 1:00 a.m. EST. Hooray for Anime publicity in the West! Don't forget to Review or check out my other works and poll!


	6. Chapter 6: Baroque

A/N: You can thank Toonami and Aniplex for me writing this Chapter early to bring you guys some news. I will be in the bottom Author's Note if you want to see it. I updated the previous move already as well.

* * *

Zoro had teleported into his rest area with Kirito in tow, he set the Black Swordsman down and went to his usual seat to drink his sake like usual after a fight. A few hours later, Kirito awoke healed from his rest and looked around, He immediately drew his blades and got into a stance.

"Relax kid, I'm not here to fight, you're in no shape to fight me either boy, I didn't even need to draw my second sword this time, I never even got to use any of the stronger versions of my techniques. Listen, there's a room there that will spawn mobs continuously for you to fight, you might have improved, but it's not enough."

"Why should I trust you? You killed me and nearly did again, you seem to know Kayaba as well, most of the other players don't trust you for this even if you aren't a programme."

"Kayaba was the one who fixed me up after I ended up here, I was fighting some guy, but he caught me and my crew off guard. I owe him some thanks and so I humor him and his ploy, it's not that I don't want to save you guys but I can't exactly just beat all of them for you or Kayaba will just keep you trapped here forever. I've seen his type before, this is how they operate, only thing we can do is bend the rules a tad and hope. Now go and train before I change my mind!"

Kirito ran off to the training room while contemplating what Zoro had said.

'That's right… Kayaba would probably just restart this game if Zoro cleared everything for us, that means that we have to fight as well, relying on Zoro entirely isn't going to get us anywhere...'

Kirito pulled the lever and entered the room, waves and waves of mobs immediately spawned and tried to attack Kirito, he immediately drew his weapons and slashed at the monsters. The mob barely took any damage and just continued to assault Kirito. Kirito continued to activate sword skill after sword skill in an attempt to kill the monster. When it finally pixelated into hexagons, it instantly respawned, but a wealth of experience flooded Kirito and he immediately leveled up, he quickly allocated his stat boosts and continued to fight.

A timer was visible at the top left corner of his view, it had started from five hundred and had gone to two hundred, Kirito ignored it to focus on surviving the mobs, blocking and parrying the strikes that came at him. One of the mobs, a snake variant, managed to catch Kirito off guard with it's tail. The attack knocked him to the wall and brought him down to twenty percent health, just as the mob was about to stab it's scimitar into Kirito, the timer hit zero. The mobs despawned and the gate opened.

Kirito stumbled out the gate into Zoro, he fell back as he knocked into the swordsman.

"What the heck was that about? Were you trying to kill me?"

"Huh? You mean you didn't change the difficulty level before going in? Those were to mobs I used to train, they die in one hit for me though. Hold on, lemme knock it down a notch for you."

Zoro headed to the side of the gate and pushed the button, an interface popped up where Zoro changed the settings from ten thousand to one and pressed enter.

"There ya go, now it should be around your level."

"One? Even I can't be that weak right? I mean I beat one of those ten thousand ones right?"

"Don't get cocky now kid, you only beat that one cause it literally let you, the first kill is almost free as a precaution to make sure the system isn't glitched. You'll find that even at Level One, these mobs aren't that easy to kill… There's always gonna be someone stronger than you kid, remember that as you fight, even if you are the strongest at what you do, there'll always be someone who can defeat you with ease using a different skill…"

"Sorry…"

"Don't apologise to me, just make sure to train up and beat me. Relax, I'll only fight you with the very basics of my techniques, I doubt you could handle anything else anyway!"

"Yeah, I guess so…"

Kirito headed into the room and pulled the lever once more, the mobs spawned again and Kirito slayed the first one. After the system detected no glitches, the monsters became fully active and started to swarm him. They each took multiple sword skills to take down, but dealt low damage. Kirito was battered around by the massive amount of creatures that swarmed him, each hit chipping off a little bit of his health bar. His Battle Healing kept him relatively safe, but he was slowly getting overwhelmed. The counter soon reached zero and the gate opened once more, Kirito exited the room exhausted from the barrage of monsters. He looked to see Zoro drinking a bottle of sake at the bar humming to the tune playing in the background.

"Oi Zoro, how much sake does that thing hold? I see you drinking from it all the time, but do you ever need to refill it or something?"

"This? It's an endless bottle kid, Kayaba gave it to me, and a fine endless bottle of sake it is…"

Zoro downed another gulp of sake and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"Well, I'll be going out now, try not to die on me Black Swordsman…"

Zoro teleported out and back into the arena and started to grind on more Asuras. After a short break, Kirito decided to continue his training and pulled the lever once more.

* * *

Over a month had passed since Kirito had been taken by Zoro, Asuna was devastated by this but eventually learned to suppress the feelings with assurance from Yui that he was still alive and the obligation to save everyone from the death game. By three weeks in, Asuna had managed to readjust to life without Kirito, but it never felt the same. The day for the 76th boss meeting came and what the scouting team described was unusual to say the least.

In the Beta, the second floor boss had been "**Baran the General Taurus"**, but was changed when the game was officially released. The boss that the scouts described was very similar to it.

"This boss sounds a lot like the boss we fought on the second floor in the Beta, if it's just a powered up version of that, then we can assume it at least has the same moveset…" one of the Beta members reasoned.

"I propose we train a bit more first, we pretty much lost the fight last floor and I don't want anymore casualties like last time." Asuna suggested.

"Then we are wasting more of our lives in this game than we have to! I'm sure everyone here wants to leave as soon as possible and we all know that the easiest way to do that is sacrificing five people!" a clearer shoted.

The room immediately fell into a state of silence as the player broke the unspoken rule of never mentioning sacrifices.

"The boss fight will commence next week, take the time to train. This meeting is adjourned…"

The clearers left the meeting in silence, leaving a depressed Asuna behind.

'Kirito-kun, where are you? I can't do this on my own…'

The week passed and a meeting was held by the new Vice-Commander of KOB to discuss the weaknesses of the boss, while Asuna took care of setting up the portal.

"Alright, so to summarize, the room is likely an Anti-Crystal Zone, the boss has an AOE attack and can summon mobs, anything else? No? Then let's move out!"

The clearers went to the meeting point and just as they arrived, a portal opened up, they headed through it and found themselves before the boss door with Asuna next to it. When all the players were assembled, they opened the boss door and met their boss.

It was a giant monster that resembled a minotaur, surrounding it was a horde of Private Minotaurs. When the boss took notice of them and the battle began, the boss took out two battle axes and dual wielded them. It's name and six health bars then appeared.

"**General Baroque of the Minotaur Army"**

Baroque's eyes flared red and he spun both his axes before posing with one pointed at the clearers and the other by his side.. The doors slammed shut and Baroque commanded his Minotaur army to attack the players. The creatures charged towards the clearers, each with their own target. Those caught off guard were pinned to the ground or knocked away by the beasts, the clearers who managed to notice the attack in time either stood their ground and blocked or used the Minotaur's own momentum against them to shove them away.

Those who beat back the Privates moved on to help the others, with the extra time to train, the clearers suffered no losses, but multiple people needed to rest and heal. The tanks that were relatively unscathed from the stampede immediately formed their line of defense to shield the recovering clearers.

Baroque, detecting that his soldiers had fallen, slammed its two axes into the ground by its side, spawning two Specialist Minotaurs. They held pikes and had a little more armor than the Privates, the Specialists were also significantly larger. The mobs advanced on the clearers, the two Specialists were significantly stronger than the Privates and easily shrugged off most of the strikes from the clearers who split off from the main group. The Specialists rushed through the tanks, going straight for the players with high attack.

The different targeting method of the Specialists caught the clearers off guard, the tanks tried to slash at the Specialists as they charged past but did minimal damage. The two mobs distracted a majority of the hard hitters and the tanks were left to fend for themselves against Baroque. Asuna shouted out orders and let Fuurinkazan and the Divine Dragon Alliance deal with a Specialist each while she and the rest of the Knights of Blood headed to distract Baroque until the Specialists were defeated and the guilds could combine forces against the boss.

The fights with the Specialists were easy due to their set pattern and low armor. Only when Klein made a joke of how stupid it was for having a set attack pattern did the Specialist the see an opening to strike at Klein, the hit knocked Klein onto the ground causing less serious members of his guild, mainly his friends, to laugh at him while dodging the strikes.

A KOB member shouted at them from the fight with Baroque upon hearing the laughter.

"Oi, this is no time to be messing around, focus on the fight you guys!"

The players helped their leader up and got back into stance, soon, the Specialist the DDA were dealing with fell, but just as it's health bar hit zero, it activated it's last attack skill and threw its pike straight at one of the DDA members. The flying projectile caught him off guard and hit him dead on, the pike continued to fly and embedded itself into the wall of the room, the clearer struggled to get free, but the pike had penetrated through his lungs and his health was draining fast. His health bar hit zero and he burst into hexagons along with the Specialists.

One of the calmer DDA members informed the other clearers of the last attack and they managed to counter the next one. With the Specialists down, the clearers joined up to attack the boss. The boss' attack pattern had already been analyzed by the KOB and they effectively managed to whittle down the boss' health bar. The first health bar eventually reached zero and Baroque used its skill. His two axes glowed green as he smashed them both into the ground repeatedly, simulating an earthquake which incapacitated most of the clearers and caused portions of the roof to collapse. The collapse sealed part of the boss room and limited the area the clearers had to fight.

At the end of the earthquake, Baroque slammed his two axe handles into the ground a final time, spawning two Corporal Minotaurs. The Corporal Minotaurs were equipped with swords and shields, much like the loadout of most tanks. The Corporals wore heavy frontal armor and had thick shields. Unlike the Specialists, the Corporals stood their ground and protected the boss from the clearers. The players were hard pressed to get past the powerful defense of the Corporals, though the upside was that the Corporals rarely attacked and only moved to block the clearers from attacking Baroque.

As the tanks slowly took damage, one of the players thought of an idea and shot a Throwing Needle at the eye of one of the Corporals. The beast yelled out in pain and knocked its ally over, damaging both their shields beyond repair. Without a shield to use for defense any longer, the Corporals drew their swords and proceeded to hack at the clearer's tanks instead. Each strike pushed the tanks back bit by bit, the resounding clash of metal against metal echoing through the room. With each hit, the durability of the tanks' shields fell, the Corporals had apparently gone berserk and only targeted tanks, leaving the high damage dealers able to attack them from their armourless backs.

Asuna once again split the clearers into the three main groups for the battle, the fight raged on and the Corporals eventually were defeated. They broke into hexagons and the clearers grouped up to focus on Baroque. With a health bar gone, Baroque's attack pattern had changed and he now held one of the axes in a reverse grip. This made his attacks more unpredictable for the clearers, resulting in more failed dodges and blocks. While he had six health bars, Baroque did not do a large amount of damage and instead relied on his summons to fight for him. The players soon learned to effectively dodge his attacks and managed to knock another health bar down.

As the second health bar broke, Baroque once again created an earthquake, sealing more of the room off from the clearers. This time, two Warrant Officer and Lieutenant Minotaurs were spawned. The Warrant Officers had light armor but held crossbows and immediately retreated behind Baroque where they loaded their weapons and began firing on the clearers. The Lieutenants held broadswords and charged the clearers, clashing with their sword wielders while the Warrant Officers provided support.

Now with five enemies to deal with, Asuna lead the KOB against the Warrant Officers and let her Vice-Commander lead the DDA against the Lieutenants. Fuurinkazan was tasked with distracting the boss and was barely able to dodge the first few shots from the Warrant Officers. When Asuna and the KOB got close to the Warrant Officers, the Minotaurs kept their crossbows and drew short swords. The short blade length of the swords allowed the KOB members to dodge easily, but it also allowed the Warrant Officers to attack quicker. The clearers took more time to adapt to these patterns than the earlier ones and DDA was doing much better now that they could fight the Lieutenants without being fired upon.

Fuurinkazan however, was having a hard time coping with Baroque, they had fewer members than the other two clearer guilds and so were easily outmatched by the boss. Baroque's attack pattern had changed once again and this time he held both in reverse grip and used them to stab at the clearers from above. While Klein complained about the boss underestimating him, the clearer guilds finished off their mobs with minimal injuries and joined up with the others to take down another of Baroque's health bars.

The third health bar soon fell, enraging Baroque. He once more caused an earthquake that sealed off even more of the room, leaving only a small portion left. Baroque then spawned two Captain Minotaurs. The Captains wore brass knuckles and had a lot of armor on their arms, they rushed forwards and attacked the tanks of the groups, each one of them threw heavy punches that nearly dented the shields. Unlike the other Minotaurs, the Captains stayed together, protecting the other from damage. In order to account for this, Asuna deployed the DDA and Fuurinkazan to deal with them together from the front and back while she and the KOB dealt with the boss.

Asuna watched from her fight from Baroque as she saw two clearers get out from the crowd and break into hexagons. Apparently the earlier fight with the other mobs had taken their toll and the tank's shields broke, allowing the Captains to catch the players off guard and take them out. The remaining tanks quickly switched to their weaker back up shields for fear of their main ones breaking. This lowered their defense slightly, weakening them to some extent. They players pressed on, determined to avenge their fallen comrades. The Captains had fought with their fists, allowing for extremely rapid attacks and the knuckles giving them an increased attack strength.

The tanks had to switch often as they endured the battering from both Captains, often changing shields or resorting to parrying with large weapons because of the durability lost from the fights. The clearers were also running low on healing potions, they had healing crystals but those were rendered useless because of the Anti-Crystal Zone. They had gotten through only half the boss and were already running low on supplies. It could only get more difficult from here on out. The Captains were eventually overwhelmed by the clearers, but they were exhausted and could barely stand, the stress of always checking your durability unnerved a lot of the clearers. The more zealous of the DDA and Fuurinkazan headed to join the KOB against Baroque but the others stayed behind to rest.

Baroque's new attack pattern was ridiculous, he spun with both of the axes out stretched every now and then before going back to the standard attacks, forcing the clearers to attack sparingly, but the lack of space caused by the earthquakes made it difficult to dodge. However, this allowed the clearers to have clear breaks, each guild would fight the boss for some time before the next guild switched over for the other guild to rest. Although the rest didn't amount to much because the players had to ration their potion usage and some had fallen back to using low level potions that barely healed any health in order to speed up their healing.

The boss fight progressed slowly as the clearers struggled to deal damage. When Baroque's health bar hit zero at last and shattered, he didn't created an earthquake like before. The boss instead went berserk and attacked randomly, catching the clearers off guard. The attacks were rash and unrefined and at one point, Baroque threw away one of his axes, colliding into one of the clearers, killing him instantly. After he threw his axe, Baroque stood still for a moment and looked around the room before gripping his remaining axe tightly. The boss held it with both hands and with lightning speed, brought it down on the leader of DDA, the strike was too quick to dodge.

Time slowed for the commander as he saw the axe approach him. Noatsugu remembered when he first got trapped in this world. He freaked out at first, much like the others, but then the realization dawned on him that it was practically a dream come true. He had always wanted to leave the horrible reality he was born in and become part of the virtual world, he was just an office worker and whatever money he had, he spent it on games. When he had heard of the Nerve Gear, he immediately started saving up money, at times going hungry to save up money to meet the understandably high buy price of the equipment.

He got lucky and was selected for the Beta Test, Noatsugu was ecstatic as he put on the Nerve Gear and linked up. The world he experienced was amazing, it was everything he could have dreamed of, though the time was short lived, the Beta Test came to a close and he had to go back to his monotonous life. He yearned for the official release day and when it finally came, he was the first in, he rejoiced as he was thrown back into the world. Noatsugu partnered with the next Beta Player that came online and immediately set to gaining levels.

After his party member failed to log out, he checked it himself and found it to be true, the teleportation surprised him but after the initial shock, he cheered Lind up and they both set to train. The Beater incident didn't surprise him, someone had to take the fall, and when guilds became available, he and Lind got together with some others and set up the Divine Dragon Alliance in commemoration of a dragon field boss they had slain together. Their guild grew bigger and bigger, soon becoming one of the top clearing guilds right along side the Knights of Blood. Noatsugu had gotten his dream of living in the virtual world and in his last moments, smiled… Though the smile was bittersweet…

And the axe came down.

Noatsugu was cut cleanly in half and shortly broke into hexagons, leaving everyone in shock as the fifth person was slain, and Zoro came.

* * *

A/N: Hello, for those who wanted to see Zoro beat up Baroque, sorry but it got a little long. Now for the news, Toonami has started to air Dragon Ball and One Piece at 8.00 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. on Saturdays, which is great, because it usually airs somewhere in the middle of the night. Another thing is that there is a karaoke contest for the English version of Crossing Field ending on 12 April. There is a video on Youtube by AniplexUS promoting it if you are interested. Now that this is all caught up to my other story, I'll be working on another story till it's done, so I'll probably take a while to update this. Be sure to Review and check out my other works or polls!


	7. Chapter 7: The Flash

A/N: I'm back! Sorry for the long wait, but I finally found time to update a story and decided to at last write this chapter. I wanted to write it once Pica was defeated but it was taking too long so I wrote it early.

* * *

The humongous doors of the boss room were thrown open and a single lone figure walked in He wore a familiar black armor and cloak. His hair was black in colour and he wielded two blades, one crystal blue, the other ebony black, silence befell the room as they realized who it was.

Kirito the Black Swordsman had arrived and he was more intimidating than before. After a few brief moments of confusion, the players were teleported onto a glass platform near the top of the room. Asuna looked down and tried calling out to him

"Kirito-kun! What are you doing here?! It's dangerous, I don't want to lose you again!"

The possibility dawned on Asuna that Kirito was either forced to do this or Kayaba had promised him something immensely valuable

"Kirito-kun! You don't have to do this! There has to be another way! No matter what Kayaba has done you can't give in to his demands!"

Kirito could not hear Asuna from where she was and proceeded to fight the boss. Zoro had gotten lost halfway through the dungeon even when they spawned a corridor away from the boss door and so he had to face the boss himself. Kirito hoped that Zoro would find the right way soon, even if he had been training intensively, there was no telling how much it would actually do against the boss.

He just had to delay the boss until Zoro got here to fight it. He got into his usual Dual Blades stance and prepared to fight the boss. He had learned to create his own artificial sword skills using Skill Connect and has so far made one. Zoro had assessed it to be a potent skill, but the cooldown would likely not be worth the attack unless the enemy died once the attack finished.

Kirito knew he just had to delay the boss and tried using it immediately. It was a fairly long skill and hopefully Zoro would be back by the time it ended. He breathed out and charged Baroque with his fully refilled six health bars and initiated the combo. It was an extremely difficult to pull off combo as the skill required the user to attack the enemy simultaneously with multiple different moves from each sword.

**"Comet Rain!" **(170-Hit)

The skill opened up with a Vertical Square on his left and a Horizontal Square on his right, following up with two pairs of Horizontal and Vertical Arcs, switching arms between the two, effectively creating a three dimensional cube that cut Baroque in all directions. The attack hadn't finished yet and Kirito activated a Sonic Leap with his Dark Repulsor, sending him flying upwards, aimed at Baroque's head, as soon as he had gained enough height, he activated Rage Spike with his Elucidator and charged him towards Baroque.

The two swords disabled Baroque's eyes and immediately moved on to their next skills. The Elucidator was activated with Star Quint Prominence and the Dark Repulsor was activated with Vorpal Strike, dealing massive damage to Baroque's face. It howled in pain and Kirito jumped off, activating Countless Spike with both his swords, smashing back onto Baroque's head with a flurry of attacks.

As Baroque once again called out in pain, Kirito continued the onslaught, activating Slant a handful of times. He then used another Sonic Leap and Vorpal Strike combo, this time with the other swords. As the swords dealt their damage, Kirito activated another Dual Blades skill, Dead Intersection, he carved an asterix onto the boss' head and stabbed both swords into it.

Once the hit connected, Kirito activated two Sonic Leaps, utilizing them to increase his height and thus the damage of his next move, Depth Impact. The skill did a large amount of bonus height damage, staggering Baroque. Kirito jumped off once more and landed on the ground where he activated The Eclipse, dealing a large amount of damage to the weakened Baroque.

The boss had lost a lot of health by this point from the barrage of hits, but Kirito was not willing to let up, pushing his mental strength's limits to continue his bombardment of attacks. His next move was a Savage Fulcrum and Slants, attacking subsequently with Crimson Splash, creating large gashes in the Minotaur's chest. Kirito followed up with Vorpal Strikes into the wounds, causing an increased amount of damage.

Confident in the damage he had done, Kirito used two more Sonic Leaps to get good height and crashed down onto Baroque with an Inferno Raid, continuing with a Locus Hexedra. Baroque became badly stunned as Kirito jumped off and activated Star Burst Stream. The attack continued to slash at the Minotaur, using multiple circular attacks and slashes in different directions.

The sword skill ended and Kirito pushed himself to do one final attack, an End Revolver. He had not being keeping track of the boss' health in the slightest because he was in the heat of the moment and surprisingly, as the End Revolver impacted with Baroque, he suddenly stopped, breaking into hexagons seconds later and displaying the congratulations message.

Zoro had arrived sometime near the end and smirked as he saw Kirito finish off the enemy before disappearing back into the mist mysteriously, the shine of his demon eye being the last thing that could be seen of him.

As the battle ended, the clearers were teleported back to the ground where they saw as Kirito fell to the ground, paralyzed by the stacked cooldown on all his skills. He had exhausted his mental fortitude, gone beyond his limits and managed to perform the combo. They all crowded around him, Asuna pushed past the crowd to get to her beloved and hugged him with all her might.

She ordered the clearers to get back to their Guild halls or explore the next floor and slowly waited for Kirito to awake. Yui joined them after some time because Asuna had told Klein to inform her. Yui sensed her father's player signature and rushed over. She entered just as he awoke and pounced on him, cuddling him.

Kirito was startled by it, but hugged her and Asuna back. He had missed them in his absence and wanted to spend as much time as he could with them from now on. He explained Zoro's situation to Asuna and Yui, as well as what he had been doing. They were surprised that such a set up had been created just for Zoro and that Kirito had been training so hard, considering how much he usually slacked off.

They took a moment to rest from the battle before heading back to the headquarters where Asuna put her vice commander in charge temporarily. She ordered him to increase the levels of all players by twenty before they fought the next boss, he protested and said that there was no way that all the clearers would be willing to wait that long.

"Then tell them that if Zoro comes and takes Kirito away again because five people died then we are losing an extremely valuable asset. You have seen what he is capable of, he defeated the boss meant for Zoro in a single move. While Zoro would have killed it with one attack, it is still remarkable he did not die, but won."

Of course while this was true, Asuna mainly wanted to protect her Kirito from being taken away from her again by Zoro, it had already happened twice and she would not allow a third. She and Kirito brought Yui on a family outing where they enjoyed themselves thoroughly while the clearers reluctantly trained up.

* * *

As for Zoro, he was having a grand time chatting with Kayaba about Kirito's progress.

"Really Zoro, what kind of monster did you manage to train? He could very well clear the game by himself with that combo."

"Relax, that combo has an unbelievably long cooldown, it practically takes him out of the fight and he can only use it as the opening attack or he will be too tired to complete it. The boss rooms are locked up during the fight right? Meaning that it's unlikely they'll force him to use it because of the risks of losing him. He is more valuable to them for doing consistent high damage throughout the fight."

"I guess I'll go and increase the difficulty of the bosses then…"

"Oi Kayaba, explain to me why that guy was here."

"Who?"

"I don't know, some Captain Kuro."

"I honestly have no idea, much like you, they entered the game at some point after the Beta ended. I hadn't thought to inform you as it was likely not important."

"They? So there's more of them?"

"I think they entered as a group."

"There were many others but I have no idea where they are now."

"I hope they didn't go around and attack people, they might have been pushovers in my world but they are definitely formidable foes here."

"Data shows that they've only sparred with each other as of now, no one else has been hurt by their activities so far. They seem to have a common interest of killing you, the Captain Kuro you mentioned split off from the main group because he couldn't wait any longer."

"Well if that's the case then I can just wait for them to come to me. Hey Kayaba, could you give me something tougher? The Asura's just aren't cutting it anymore."

"Seriously? I'll need time to design an entire boss Zoro, you are getting way too strong."

"I'm not strong enough until I become the world's strongest swordsman."

"Of course, I'll try and cook something up but it could take a while."

"I'd appreciate that."

"Oh Zoro, I think you have a visitor."

"What? How the heck is that possible? The monsters should still be there."

It was then that Zoro heard a familiar squeaky voice.

"_Come on out, Roronoa Zoro! I want my revenge for what you did to me back in Dressrosa!"_

Zoro couldn't help but laugh after hearing this voice for the first time in so long. Once he recomposed himself, he headed out of his rest area and saw a man with a yellow-gold spiked helmet.

"Is that you soprano-voiced dumb-ass? How've you been?"

_"Be quiet or I'll crush you!"_

"Do you really think you can do that?"

_"I'll avenge Doffy and kill you Zoro, then I'll move on to kill the other Straw Hats!"_

"Your voice seriously cracks me up soprano, especially when you try and act menacing like that! Hahahaha!"

_"Grr… I challenge you to a fight Roronoa, we will fight tomorrow here at noon, if you aren't here then I'll start killing innocents!"_

"Fine by me soprano, just try and put up a real fight, I'll even get Kayaba to build up a nice pile of rocks for you to assimilate. Not that it'll make a difference though."

_"Don't underestimate me, I've grown much stronger since our last fight."_

"Oi Kayaba, mind placing some boulders or something here for him? The fight would otherwise be too easy."

"Sure, you don't mind me inviting some people to watch right?"

_"Don't ignore me!"_

"I'll take that as a yes."

WIth that, Kayaba teleported off and left Zoro and Pica to their own devices.

"Listen here soprano, go and prepare yourself, I don't want a fight that is as easy as Captain Kuro. If I don't get hit at least once by you in that fight, I am putting you out of your misery for good."

_"Kek, you should be the one who needs to prepare."_

"Whatever you say, just get out, it's time for my training session."

Later that day, a notification was sent to all players. Another invitation to fight Zoro, this time with a showcase match at the start. Zoro had apparently gotten quite famous for his skills and tailors had begun to create Zoro t-shirts, napkins, pins and many other Zoro merchandise types. Some blacksmiths had also tried to replicate his swords to no avail. Without proper information the blacksmiths had no idea what material to use to even begin forging the blade with.

Once more, a group of clearers were assembled to safely clear the path to Zoro. The people took their seats in the colosseum once again as Zoro entered the arena. There was still a large amount of distrust for Zoro among the players but at this point most had decided not to dwell on it and focus on getting out alive.

After a few moments, Zoro's opponent was teleported into the colosseum in a flash of blue light. A massive man with a yellow-gold helmet was his opponent. The man moved towards the pile of boulders and immediately assimilated them. New rocks spawned immediately after they were used up, giving Pica enough stone to grow to his largest size.

"Hurry up soprano, the crowd can't wait all day."

The players watched from their seat as Pica grew larger and larger, nearing the boundaries of the colosseum. Kirito watched from the stands as the stone giant began to take shape. Asuna and Yui looked at the large figure's intimidating size but knew that no matter how strong it was, Zoro would easily defeat it.

_"Be quiet! I'll crush you!"_

The audience burst into laughter at the sound of his voice and an uproar of jeers could be heard.

_"All of you be quiet! I'll crush you after I kill Zoro!"_

One member of the audience stood up and laughed at Pica.

"Kill him, please, I doubt you'll even scratch him, let alone crush him!"

_"I'll show you!"_

The timer counted down and the duel began. Pica opened the fight with a punch that Zoro easily evaded. The impact left a huge impression in the ground where Zoro was and prompted him to taunt the stone giant.

"Now now soprano, you can't honestly be expecting to hit me with those slow punches are you? I'll tell you what, I'll give you nine more free attacks. If you fail to damage me then I will start to fight back."

Pica used every trick at his disposal to try and land a hit on Zoro, from launching parts of himself at the swordsman to using his sword but nothing got through. With his last free attack used up, Zoro began to retaliate.

"You disappoint me soprano… I wish we could've played a bit more, but sadly for you, my patience has run dry…"

Zoro drew his three swords and got into stance.

**"Santoryu Ogi: Rokudo no Tsuji: Nanatsudo!" **(Three Sword Style Secret Technique: Crossing of Six Paths: Seventh Path!)

Six slashes created an asterisk of cuts on Pica and a seventh piercing attack was dealt to the middle of the asterisk. It instantly destroyed the stone giant as it broke into hexagons. The crowd cheered as the hexagons disappeared.

"Now… I need a challenger, who will face me!"

A white and red blur was seen jumping into the field. As the dust cleared, it was revealed that Asuna has decided to challenge Zoro.

"So you've come to fight me this time?"

"I will defeat you!"

"I'd like to see you try girl."

The timer counted down and Asuna opened up her attacks with a sword skill, catching Zoro off guard with her speed.

**"Linear!" **(1-Hit)

He just about managed to block the attack at the last moment with a barely unsheathed katana. She jumped back as soon as the attack failed and prepared for a counter attack.

"You seem faster than the others, what is your name?"

"Asuna the Flash."

"Flash huh, well lets see which is faster, your legs, or my sword…"

Zoro sheathed his sword and put his hand on the hilt.

**"Ittoryu Iai: Shi Shishi Ou Sonson!" **(One Sword Style Draw and Resheath Technique: Lion King's Song of Death!)

The blade was drawn and Zoro rushed forwards in a burst of speed, slashing at his prey. Once the cut had been made, he sheathed his sword. All this happened in an instant and would have been missed if you blinked. Kirito watched anxiously as Asuna fought Zoro. She had convinced him that she would fight this time in place of him, seeing that a fight of strength with Zoro would be pointless, she wanted to face him in a match of speed.

None of the fighters moved for a moment and to the pain of Kirito, a bright red gash opened on Asuna's left shoulder. She had managed to dodge the attack at the last moment but did not escape from harm fully. Though it seemed that Zoro had not taken any damage, Asuna had managed to do something in the last few moments of his attack.

A bottle tied to Zoro's side had been cut. The bottom half fell onto the ground and the liquid within spilled onto the sandy dry ground of the colosseum. As he heard the sound of it falling, Zoro looked back and saw half of his precious bottle on the ground. He untied the upper half on his belt and stared at it wide mouthed.

"ARGH! MY SAKE!"

The bottle broke into hexagons as its durability bar was at zero and Zoro looked down at the dirt where the last of his sake had spilled.

"Er… Sorry about that, I'll make you some more at the end of the fight so don't worry abou-"

"That was an endless sake bottle you just broke! There's only one of them in the world! Now how am I supposed to have my daily fill of sake?!"

"I'm sure you could get some easily at the store…"

"Are you going to buy it for me then?! I don't have enough money for that damn it! Oi Kayaba, this stupid fight thing was your idea, return me my sake bottle!"

"Um… Zoro, what about the fight?"

"Who the hell cares about that?! Eh Kayaba, are you even listening to me?!"

Just as Zoro was about to start murdering Asuras in rage, a bottle of sake fell onto his head from the heavens and he nearly failed to catch it as it bounced off his head.

"Ah! My sake!"

He opened it and gulped down barrels worth of sake as a celebration before tying it to his belt and drawing his sword. Though he had drunk so much sake that his stomach had temporarily expanded to the size of a small boulder. Next to his health bar, a debuffed was displayed.

_Bloated - Player's movement speed is greatly reduced due to large amounts of food or drinks ingested._

Asuna couldn't help but giggle when she saw the great swordsman as a giant ball in front of her.

"Eh, hurry up and attack, I'm getting bored here!"

"You still can fight in that condition?"

"I've fought while worse off before."

"Then I won't hold back!"

She rushed in and initiated her sword skill.

**"Star Splash!" **(8-Hit)

Even with the skill designed to strike at the foes openings in defense, none of the hits got through. The opening three thrusts were easily blocked by Zoro who anticipated the next two slashes at his feet and blocked them with ease. The two jabs that came at him were quick, but not quick enough. The final thrust attack was stopped dead in its tracks by the flat of Zoro's blade.

Without leaving any time for his opponent to react, Zoro turned his katana to barely hold back hers and pushed forwards, cutting straight through the rapier. The slash split most of Lambent Light's blade into two and left Asuna with barely any health.

"Concede, you've lost this battle."

Knowing it herself, Asuna gave up the fight and returned to the spectator seats with Kirito and Yui.

"You were really strong Mama! Though Zoro seemed to be stronger!"

"You tried your best Asuna, for now you should rest."

Kirito shouted to one of the vendors and ordered some refreshments for them while some arrogant or curious players tried to take down Zoro.

The challenges eventually stopped and Zoro left the area. The players also left the colosseum and returned to their homes.

* * *

A/N: There is probably going to be a timeskip next chapter since I doubt it will be interesting to see every single boss fight and so I will fast forward time in order to hopefully keep things interesting. Remember to follow, favourite, review, check out my other stories and poll.


	8. Chapter 8: The End

A/N: Apparently it has been too long since I had updated and some people have forgotten but this Zoro is Post-Post Timeskip. What happened was that Zoro was ambushed by the now fully under Marine control Kuma and sent flying without mercy at such high speeds that he tore a hole through the fabric of reality and ended up in Sword Art Online, hence why he can use post timeskip techniques.

* * *

Through the months that followed, each month, one player would be chosen to face Zoro after a showcase fight, none came close to defeating him. Only on Kirito's fifth attempt did someone actually even get him to draw his second blade again. Zoro had been improving at a pace no one could match and was soon getting bored. Kayaba noticed this and tried to create harder enemies but even they could not ease Zoro's boredom, he had simply become too powerful.

As Zoro relaxed in the bar each day while reminiscing on the days with Luffy, the clearers slowly cleared the floors, careful to prevent any casualties and eventually reached the ninetieth floor. Since there were no deaths, Zoro got no action, the showcase matches got boring as things fell before him upon the draw of his blade. None of his old enemies even appeared anymore, too afraid of his strength.

Soon Kayaba also got bored, nothing was exciting anymore, even with the floor bosses, no one ever died since Asuna forced them all to overtrain to reduce the risk of deaths to zero. The Army was also completely restructured following Kirito's return and they became an actual fighting force which managed to join the front lines,

Kayaba's favourite Player Killer Guilds had also slowly begun to disband as more and more safety precautions were placed on civilians to allow them safety while out of safezones. The world which Kayaba created and wished to play God in, slowly fell apart before his very eyes. Kayaba smashed his fist against the table he was sitting at, the Immortal Object notice popping up as the object was hit. Kayaba watched in irk as the next nine bosses were effortlessly defeated until only the ninety-ninth floor boss stood against the clearers and their final step to freedom.

'This wasn't what I wanted! I created Sword Art Online to have a world where I made the rules and could watch over them as they had their adventures! Now because of the shock of the floor bosses being so strong, the clearers have become too strong and completely outclass the bosses, even civilians are completely safe from crime now that the reformed Army has begun to offer protection to all non-clearers when they leave safezones! There is no meaning in such a boring world!''

Slowly, what remained of Kayaba's patience ran out and he decided to start making things interesting by force. Opening his administrative panel, Kayaba opened up the properties customization of the ninety-ninth floor boss, tapping away at the interface and changing the boss. When he had finished, Kayaba smiled a maniacal smile that none would expect to ever grace the mad scientist's face.

* * *

The clearers gathered outside the door of the second last boss room and had another of their strict briefings to ensure no one would lose their lives. The clearers had all trained to level two hundred and above in preparation for the boss fight, the blacksmiths had also worked hard the entire time to forge the strongest weapons possible for the clearers. The fight was led by Kirito who would open up with his combo while the other clearers stayed back and protected him while the ability cooled down.

The boss room door opened and the clearers charged in, taking their positions based on the plan discussed earlier while Kirito started the offensive against the boss. It was a rather strange boss to be fighting in Sword Art Online, a world based around bladed weapons without even a bow. It was called The Eye of Anubis and was basically a huge floating eye attached to a wall with a single peculiar healthbar.

As the clearers approached the boss, it started spawning hordes of undead zombies who went after the clearers and overwhelmed them with numbers. They quickly retreated to regroup and Asuna called for a change in formation to better combat the enemy's new pattern. They had only managed to scout the appearance of the boss as all boss rooms now locked behind the Adventurers, making it difficult to scout much information.

Despite the overwhelming strength the players had, they were no match for the unending wave of undead sent their way. Some could not manage to regroup and were surrounded by undead, forced to simply run through the enemy rather than beat them back, sustaining heavy injuries in the process. Most were forced to run back to recuperate while hiding behind those who had managed to break off without difficulty.

After a few minutes, the group had reformed and in their new formation, advanced and fought back the advancing undead army. Kirito and Asuna led the charge with other Guild leaders by their sides, cutting deep into the enemy forces' formation and working to cull them from the inside out. While doing this, two teams, moving along the left and right flank, moved to attack the enemy to split their forces.

Soon the undead stopped spawning and the players cleaned up while those injured took potions. As the last undead was killed and it broke into hexagons, the players regrouped and readied themselves for the next phase of the mysterious boss. As predicted, the Eye of Anubis now entered the fight personally.

Four legs sprouted from behind the eye and dug into the wall where it rested. The legs lifted the eye before jumping onto the platform where the clearers fought and spawned another wave of undead. The eye had landed in the group of clearers and scattered their formations. The undead spawned in any opening between players and many rushed to rejoin others or rescue allies. Kirito had little trouble slicing down the undead before he finally realized something.

He had managed to get a good look at one of the ghouls that attacked him, it had shoulder length black hair and a feminine face. A light blue tunic, smudged and darkened by blood and gore, with a hanging chestguard was one of the more key features. It was when he examined the face and noticed a small mole near the bottom right of her right eye that realization dawned on who he was fighting.

"Sachi…?"

"Ki...Ri...To…"

In panic at finally understanding the enemy, Kirito slashed at the ghoul before it could do anything else in an effort to bury the memory he had that day. In fear, Kirito looked around and glanced at the myriad of faces, recognizing some as people he once knew. He heard a shout nearby as another also discovered the truth.

"Kobatz!? Didn't you die? Oi, snap out of it!"

Kobatz, Kirito recalled, the leader of the members of the Army that had gone to fight on the seventy-fourth floor.

"Yamada!? Is that you?"

'People are starting to panic, something needs to be done before any further chaos ensued.'

Kirito looked to Asuna and could tell that she too understood the gravity of the situation. The leader of the KOB issued her orders and called for the clearers to retreat for a quick meeting.

"Everyone, head towards the door, we need to re-strategize, Silent Coffin, cover our backs!"

Silent Coffin, a relatively new addition to the clearers who joined only a few floors back. It was a Guild made up of ex-player-killers. They were grudgingly accepted after much deliberation and now worked towards the common goal of getting out of Sword Art Online. Asuna chose them to fight off the undead as they would not feel much remorse towards killing people again. She tried her best to rally the troops against the undead but a number of them wouldn't move, unwilling to kill others.

Seeing no other alternative, Asuna assigned those under duress to be part of the boss attackers and hastily tried to rebalance formations to assault the boss. While there had yet to be any casualties, many were getting injured too quickly to be logical when facing the ninety-ninth floor's boss spawns, even accounting for the fact that Kayaba would want a tough challenge for them. Without time to ponder on it any longer, she declare the attack.

* * *

Zoro sat at his bar, swirling a cup of sake and watching the fluid swish around the cup. He sighed a long sigh before feeling that something was wrong mid-sigh and stood up with urgency evident in his posture. He turned on the television Kayaba had prepared for him to look at boss fights with to know how it was progressing.

It had been a while since it was last on since there were usually no issues and nothing exciting usually happened. Following a feeling in his gut, he looked at the boss fight taking place and noticed that the boss was completely overwhelming the players, not giving them a single opportunity to let them attack it.

The Eye of Anubis had summoned up wave after wave of enemies that the players somehow managed to combat. Adjusting his viewpoint, Zoro noticed that they were low on healing items and that most of them had cuts deep into their flesh while fighting. As if not already unfair, the boss was also near unhittable besides the four spider like legs holding it up.

He watched the fight intently for a few minutes before he saw the clearers finally manage to get the giant eyeball to fall over and be vulnerable. They sent everything they had at it, Kirito's Comet Rain included, until its health bar was cut down to seventy-five percent. Fearing a phase shift, which was a logical thought, the players retreated and fortified their position for the new attack pattern that could strike them.

Their fears were confirmed as the boss changed from simply summoning troops to fighting its own battles. The first batch of players who hacked away at the giant eye's legs got a taste of its wrath as a gold ray of heat shot out from the eye and roasted one of them alive, their first casualty. Powering through his death, the players continued their onslaught in hopes of taking down the boss before any more losses occurred.

Unbeknownst to the clearers, the ashes of the killed player did not break into hexagons but instead slowly integrated back into the dead player, only now, his body had rotted and turned pale. His sword arm had a broken joint and the jaw of the man once known as Yuma hung loose. A painful moan emerged from its mouth, scaring those around and causing them to look towards the origin of the call.

Yuma's mind watched helplessly as he once again saw light after being killed. He at first thought he had been revived but soon dismissed the thought when he realized that he had no control over his body. A second presence had invaded his mind and was controlling his now decrepit avatar. He found himself attacking his allies against his will and was internally screaming when he cut down one of his closest friends who promptly joined him in the world of the undead. Zoro slammed his cup against the table at the sight of this and bolted off to the boss fight immediately.

'This isn't fair Kayaba, has their strength and ease in clearing of the floors finally made you crack?'

After an hour of brutal fighting, Zoro finally found his way to the boss room and entered to find most of the clearers exhausted. Barely any had even noticed him opening the doors to the room, too focused on their own fights for the sound of the doors to break their intense concentration. The adrenaline was pumping in all the room's occupants as tensions were high. They were all scared and practically fighting for their lives as Zoro had failed to appear despite multiple deaths.

"All of you! Get clear!"

A loud echoing shout from Zoro broke the clearers from their combat trances and recognizing their savior, retreated to the nearest safe area they could find. Zoro readied his blades and looked with an accusing eye at the giant eye of a boss. Taking all three of them and getting into stance, Zoro prepared his attack.

**Santoryu Ogi: Sanzen Sekai: Dai Yongai!** (Three Sword Style Secret Technique: Three Thousand Worlds: Fourth Realm!)

Zoro dashed forward with his blades so quickly that likely not even a high speed camera would have seen him. Using his sword, Zoro had somehow made four cuts that severed all of the eye's legs, causing it to collapse to the ground. With a final deadly thrust, Zoro stabbed Shusui into the centre of the eye, causing it to squirm in pain for a few seconds as its health drained rapidly before it burst into hexagons and all its minions disappeared.

Everyone but Zoro collapsed as the fight ended, coming down from their combat adrenaline high, now completely exhausted as the fatigue their body ignored to prioritize survival kicked in. Most were sore all over and would barely be able to move for days. Zoro looked up, knowing that Kayaba would likely have been watching from above.

"Oi Kayaba! What is the meaning of this!?"

As if answering to Zoro's question, a giant screen made itself visible and Kayaba could be seen sitting in a chair, his face smiling like a madman.

"This isn't good Zoro, you weren't supposed to be at that boss fight, it was meant to wipe out everyone!"

"You crazy bastard, wasn't this supposed to be a fair game?"

"It was, but then you all made it so boring by all your training. If no one dies then this is practically just a game, and that's no fun!"

'He's lost it…'

"Come, come, go through the door and fight the last boss I've prepared, it will be a fun time I promise!"

Zoro looked around and saw the one he had been looking for.

"Kirito, get everyone out of here and be ready to leave."

"Leave?"

"I'm clearing this game, alone."

Zoro walked off towards the door to the next floor and opened it. A sense of nostalgia overcame most of the clearers, especially Kirito, as Zoro opened the large doors and stepped through alone, much like the Black Swordsman had on the first floor. They got to work healing up and helped those still too mentally exhausted to exit the boss room before using a crystal to teleport to the nearest town.

* * *

Zoro entered the room and found himself facing a giant wall. Just as he thought he had gone through the wrong door and was about to leave, hundreds of health bars appeared on the wall and he looked up to see its name, the Immovable Object. This was not the boss fight he had been expecting, Kayaba watched from afar as he saw Zoro appear.

"Kayaba, you sure are a funny one aren't you?"

Kayaba then descended from above the wall and floated in mid air.

"I don't have a clue what you are asking Zoro, I am not joking whatsoever!"

"I figured you would change the final boss into something ridiculous but instead all I got was a wall…"

"Ah, I apparently locked myself out of access to the last boss, a safety protocol supposedly."

"So this thing is meant to be here?"

"Yup!"

"You expect me to believe the final boss in the game was supposed to be a damn wall?"

"Well it was supposed to be a symbolic boss, to show that only one that overcame the power of an unstoppable force would be able to break through the wall."

"So someone was supposed to solo this thing?"

"Yea, cool isn't it!?"

"No."

"Oh you're no fun Zoro, what happened to the old days, when we would have fun?"

"Those days are long gone Kayaba, it's time to end this."

"Whatever floats your boat Zoro, though you probably already cut it with your swords, hahahahaha!"

"Wait a minute, come to think of it, why are you the only one who recognizes me? No one else I've met had heard of me before the game."

"Ah that? You're not supposed to be real is all, you were in some show which ended years ago. They probably never heard of it!"

"Crazy old man… Whatever, I said I would clear the game, so let me have at it!"

"Alright Zoro! I'll see ya on the other side!"

'Crazy old man, maybe if I ended this earlier he wouldn't have snapped…'

With that final thought, Zoro drew his swords. He sent a barrage of attacks at the wall, all in a fruitless effort to at least damage it slightly. He looked at the very first health bar after about ten minutes of constant attacks and saw that it had not even dwindled a bit.

'What the hell Kayaba, were you planning on trapping them here forever!? Looks like it's time to get serious!'

Zoro closed his eyes and sat on the ground crossed leg for half an hour before standing up and drawing his blades. Having them at extremely awkward angles, Zoro opened his eyes, both of them. A demonic red glow was present in his normally closed eye as he uttered the words and activated his technique.

**Kindanryu: Sente Asura Keishiki Kaihou! **(Forbidden Sword Style: Thousand Hands Asura Form Release!)

As the last syllable of the technique's name left his mouth, Zoro suddenly floated up and an aura began to envelope him. In mere moments, the aura grew to a size easily comparable to that of a flagship and started to become solid. The form took the shape of a giant deity and had a thousand arms sprouting out of it, each holding a unique weapon from maces to swords to hammers to forks.

The giant began its onslaught, swinging all its arms continuously at the wall, pounding it with enough force that the entire of AIncrad shook, causing its inhabitants all to panic. After a full minute of punishment, the first of the Immovable Object's health bars broke. The barrage continued relentlessly as Zoro attacked the wall with all his weapons simultaneously.

By the time Zoro milled through a good number of the bars, word had spread that Zoro was up on the final floor fighting the final boss. Most, if not all, of the players in Aincrad prayed for his success while going about their final preparations, finding out the names of new friends and making arrangements to meet up in real life once all this was over. The more pessimistic of the bunch who knew of Zoro prepared suicide paths as they knew that if Zoro, who easily outclassed every player in the entire game combined and multiplied by five, could not win, then they were never getting out of here.

Time passed slowly for everyone as the fight raged on and Zoro slowly chipped away at the great wall. As the sun was just rising the next day, a beautiful sunset graced the plains of Aincrad as Zoro plowed through the walls final few remaining health bars. Just as the sun came fully into view, the final health bar went empty and the wall broke into hexagons. A bright light enveloped the world as all the players suddenly were logged out. All except, for one. Zoro stood as he was, facing Kayaba, who laughed.

"So, did you have fun?"

Zoro stood still for a moment and sheathed his swords.

"Yea, yea I did."

"Then go and have more fun then, hehehe, just beyond this door..."

With that, Kayaba broke into hexagons, leaving Zoro alone as the last player of the game. He stepped through the doorway without looking back and the game was shut down.

**Epilogue:**

Kirito and Asuna both held each other's hands as they sat in the bench of their school garden. Kirito held onto Asuna with one hand and Sandwich-kun with the other as he thought back to the events after he had been discharged.

'I still never found out who Zoro was… There were exactly six thousand five hundred and one people in the game when he cleared it, but only six thousand five hundred made it out, I wonder where he is now…'

Kazuto then looked over to Asuna then back at the sky.

'Wherever he is, I hope he's happy…'

* * *

A/N: Yes I realize this was a humongous timeskip but a similar one would likely have happened if they didn't defeat Heathcliff early so just accept it. This is the end of Zoro's time in Sword Art Online for now but I seriously let this drag on for way too long so I apologize. For those who are disappointed, I am sorry. For those who enjoyed, if any did, and want more, don't worry, Zoro's adventures in virtual worlds are far from over, on that you have my word…

As usual, review, favourite and follow if you've enjoyed. Don't forget to check out my other stories, community and poll as well. Story status information can be found on my profile and you can make suggestions on my forum.


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